Taliban : An Analysis

re hamzad afaqui 135

`Muslim countries must be ETHICALLY(sic) cleansed of the kanjars & kanjarees.The idea is to hurt & offend those who ridicule Islam,muslims,& islamic values....you guys are at least neutrals.`

The only ethnic cleansing we need is that of those elements who want to forcibly impose their retrograde religious puritanism on us, repress our women, suppress our music, and subvert our institutions. No, sir, I am not neutral at all in that regard. In the battle between democratic freedom and Islamist terror, as the President so eloquently said to Congress, there can be no neutrals. We do not intend to rest until religion is elevated to its proper sphere- in the sacred confines of an individual`s heart. The reason that ultimately we will win and you lose is the same reason that Hitler and the USSR lost: they stood for slavery as do your Islamists. And the greatest weapon in the human arsenal is the will of free men and women(Ronald Reagan).

``We will perservere, we will prepare,we will prevail.`` George W. Bush

At least on this we agree sir: there can be no compromise and no neutrals in this battle. Freedom cannot co-exist with terror and slavery.

Re: Dost-Mittar

``...How do the muslim soldiers in these regiments (esp, J&K Rifles) reconcile themselves to these slogans?...``

Don`t know. At best, a crude explanation is that there was time when the army units were heterogenous, i.e. J&K rifles were primarily Dogras, and Sikh Regiment was really Sikh, and therefore such slogans were acceptable. But not anymore. Most army units have a pandit, granthi, priest and maulvi who serve as chaplains. These are some of the imperfections in our brand of secularism.

hobbyty

I just checked in for a minute. Will respond tonight.

Semiprecious

You are absolutely right...the duo are utterly loathsome. I now have a definition for ``beneath contempt``.

How have you been lately?

Fatimah/12 head and Afaqui Sahib,

So you mouth off about the holy and pak lives that women wearing the burqa have, but you won`t subject yourselves to that holy and pak interpretation. Fatimah/12head-don`t slime your way out of this one by bring faltu and dhimke into this and not ANSWER THE QUESTION...its pretty clear that you two are full of it, you can`t see straight.

If you have any self respect, you`ll stop polluting the boards with your hypocritical garbage.

maybe of interest

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I studied in Yemen with John Walker

He was fresh from Marin, more Catholic than the pope and the other students derisively nicknamed him Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens).

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By Joshua Mortensen

Jan. 4, 2002 | CAIRO -- I met John Walker in Sana`a, Yemen, during the summer of 1998, when we both studied Arabic at the Yemen Language Center. I had forgotten his real name until I read he had been captured in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban. I knew him better as Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens, the Muslim convert who became famous for his support of the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie`s death). That`s the cynical nickname Walker`s fellow Arabic students gave him when he arrived.

The first time I met the Marin County convert, he was fresh off a flight from Europe, on his first visit to an Arab or Muslim country. Dressed in the caricatured outfit popular with Muslim converts, complete with a beard, robe and sandals, he was asking a fellow student about the closest Sunni mosque. He did not want to accidentally pray with any Shia Muslims, he explained. Unfortunately, the student he asked was a Shia. It was not the only blunder the Islam-obsessed seeker would make in his adopted culture.

Like converts of all faiths, Walker had particular ideas about the nature of true Islam. He quickly became disillusioned with the other Muslims in our language school and with Yemen in general. Yemen, he told a fellow student, was not very Islamic. Yemenis spent an inordinate amount of time chewing qat, Walker believed. Plus, they went to mosque only on Fridays, and they were confused by his California Islamic chic.

But criticizing Yemenis` devotion to Islam took some chutzpah, or ignorance. Islam is the official state religion, and Yemen is the only country in the Middle East where people actually referred to me as ``infidel`` -- not in a malevolent way, but in the way of people only vaguely aware of faiths other than their own. Islam is central to their lives. To doubt the Yemenis` piety was both naive and arrogant.

I had only brief exchanges with Walker, as he showed no interest in those of us who weren`t Muslim. His fellow foreign Muslim students at the Yemen Language Center didn`t impress Walker, either. Most were Shia, and they didn`t pray enough for his liking. I watched Walker get exasperated one afternoon, trying to rouse Muslim students at prayer call, only to hear most of them say they were going to take a nap instead. He was incredulous. Muttering how he couldn`t believe Muslims would forgo their duty to pray, he left the room in disgust.

Fixated on Quranic minutiae, Walker would become frustrated when other Muslims had a different interpretation from his. Those who were Muslim by birth didn`t much enjoy having their faith questioned by a beginner. They were usually polite and patient with Walker`s irritation with their perceived lack of devotion to their faith. But they treated him as a curiosity -- someone playing make-believe.

``Why would anyone convert to Islam anyway?`` a Canadian-Indian Muslim asked once after an encounter with Walker. The man was dismissive of Walker and his literate but adolescent approach to their shared faith, but he was even more bothered by his fundamentalist approach. Extremism sullies the reputation of moderate Muslims, and to see Walker adopt Islam`s least attractive stereotypes wholesale was insulting to many practicing, lifelong Muslims -- as though Westerners, even Muslim converts, could only imagine Islam as intolerant and narrow.

The John Walker I met suffered a problem common to converts of all religions: He was well versed in the letter of Islam, but not so clear on the spirit. To Walker, being a Muslim seemed to be largely a matter of following a certain set of rules. Islam was a tangible puzzle, and with the right knowledge it could be solved. This makes him no different from thousands of other Americans -- except for the fact that he chose Islam, not Christianity, to be the focus of his narrow, legalistic interpretation.

Apparently, nothing Walker saw in Yemen fit his Islamic ideal of strict dedication to select edicts of the Quran. He came all the way from California to Sana`a only to find a spiritual void, and he disappeared from the language school just a few weeks after he arrived. The rumor was he had traveled to the north, off-limits to foreigners at the time, to study with a fundamentalist sheik. No one knew for sure.

But I wasn`t completely surprised to learn that Walker joined the Taliban. He had already traveled all the way to Yemen only to find devotion to Islam, as he understood it, to be lacking. And if Yemen isn`t Islamic enough for you, there are very few other choices. His dim view of Shias precluded Iran. Saudi Arabia`s worldwide fame as a kingdom of hypocrites probably removed it from the list. This left only one place, the home of the self-declared most pure Islamic government on earth, Afghanistan.

That Walker would take up arms in order to foist fundamentalist Islam on the rest of the world couldn`t have been predicted -- I saw no evidence of violence in the young convert. But likewise, I saw no evidence that Walker was brainwashed by anyone but himself.

dost-mittar #130 You are right - the village mullah was hardly in the same position as the I understand the brahmins were in traditional hindu societies or the clergy in traditional western societies. The mullah was typically an individual who did not have lands or marketable skills. All this changed once Zia started funding the mullahs and once they saw the chance of gaining power through force in Pakistan. Mullahs are now armed and need to be dealt with seriously.

As for the recording of Auld Lang Syne, I would need your email address to send it.

hamzad #135 ``Muslim countries must be ETHICALLY(sic) cleansed of the kanjars & kanjarees.The idea is to hurt & offend those who ridicule Islam,muslims,& islamic values....you guys are at least neutrals.``

Dont insult me by calling me a neutral with individuals like you who pollute chowk with cheap insults (I dont care who they are directed at). The values you display on chowk - sexual references, filthy language like the use of the term ``kanjars & kanjarees`` - do not represent islamic values. You represent not Islam, but the jehalat, as I said before. Your language is that of the village mullah (who also enjoys making disgusting sexual references), although you dont have the same excuse for remaining a jahel.

re: hamidm

{...... where is the silent majority that we keep on hearing about? .... most pakistanis, specially those living in the west, are guilty of perpetuating and sustaining the most virile form of islamism - the kind that pretends to be different from the taliban strain, yet is more deadly and is slowly spreading its poison .......}

right on!...particuarly after reading retards like that detroit mullah and afaqui...but there is a `silent` group...don`t know if it is a majority, but it is there...if no one else, the couple of pakis i hang around with in real life....but then they are probably not even considered real muslims...i doubt they can remember the last time they were in a mosque...

jay

.....what`s with this mohajir business ?

.... i hate to disappoint you but mohajirs, aka, mutterwas, hindustanis and bhaiyas are generally more educated, liberal and open-minded than the non-mohajirs ....their chal challan and generally infidel ways have always shocked the incorrigible pathans, rural paindoo punjabis and the ignorant haris of sind .... they turned karachi into what hamzad afaqui would call a kanjar-khana, and very few of them ever join the jihadi lashkars or the taliban - they are more likely to join the boy-bands and multi-nationals ...... you obviously haven`t met any of the savages from the mohmand agency who change their six-yard shalwar once a year, marry off their daughters to the koran ( those who survive honor-killings) and spit niswar all over the sidewalk ( now, this might be a debatable point - is the mohajir`s red paan peek any better than khan sahib`s green squirt ? )...... the most rabid mullahs who would have us dispatch you horrible hindoos to greener cow-pastures are all pathans - qazi hussain, maulana fazlur rehman, maulana sami-ul-haq ..... the bhaiyas and the mutterwas are represented by dog-loving musharraf and that man in london .........

........ so quit ranting about the mohajirs and find something else to make your point ... in my mind the biggest culprit in creating fools in pakistan has been the military, pakistan television and the urdu press .... having said that, i still think you guys who live on the wrong side of the border are equally foolish in addition to being horrible vegetarians ......

Saminashah

“To The Cut-n-Paste Dyspeptic Duo,”

….pointless wasting your breath on them, samina…their holier-than-thou bs reeks so bad that it’s not worth it…

Saminashah

I read the interview - I thought two items pertinent to us: one is the explanation the author offers of why religions grow and of course the chialistic zeal of communism has not been lost to the author - he sees it as his duty to form opinions amongst his readers.

No suprise here, I disagree with his explanation of why traditional religions grow. Communism was also a religion, as is secular humanism. traditional religions continue to earn adherents because they provide a context of meaning and of linking the adherent with humanity and the super natural. You will note that ``meaning`` of such little importance to the author, he does not even mention it - traditional religion, to him, is but a source of fanaticism - just tripe, the kind of nonsense that only ideologues subscribe to.

Practically no discussion of the trends that have and will continue to cause upheal in the third world - economic failure, nationalism, increasing self-awareness and class awareness, significant portion of populations under age twenty, increasing expectations (given mass communication and awareness of lives in richer countries) and the inablity to fulfull those expectations, the inevitable rise of authoritarianism, the effect of secularization and rationalization on stability within traditional and failing societies, geographic and functional ragmentation (what`s devolution about?) - the author does not come across as a serious person - no one would, unless one is conscious and willing to acknowledge that the subject is increasingly complex and simple answers will infuriate rather than satisfy.

Seems to me the question that is central here is one of meaning, how is one to live one`s life. In the mess and the coming mess, we are all trying to find some meaning for our lives, for connectedness to all life - what are your thoughts? Do you not think so? It seems to me that for a majority of persons, we know that there is much (the peripheral) in tradition that needs to be jettisoned, yet the rejection of the past and in many instances of reason itself seems to be more dangerous (meaninglessness)

As far as his duty to inform and shape the opinions of others - again no suprise, strictly inline with aestheticism - and another feature of the ``modern`` - reference to authenticity of experience, ``I have seen it`` - and of course the rejection of the past.

of the imagery the author relates as experience (a lot like Rushdi?): what is central to modernism is derogation of the cognitive.

``Only as an esthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity`` Nietzche

``...The tremendous awe which seizes man when he suddenly begins to doubt the cognitive modes of experience...when in a given instance the law of causation seems to suspend itself...if an aesthetic product is a work of art, art requires illusion - and maker of illusions!...We have art in order not to perish of the truth`` Nietzche

or is the reality/imagery Foucaultian madness? is the levi-strauss notion that distinctions such as ``primitive`` and ``advanced`` meaningless? Will reality said to have been sufficiently derogated to reason meaningless?

Again we are back to meaning and how does one live one`s life - we`re back to traditional religion and it`s framework of meaning, man in cosmology - anyway it should be clear that I at least remain very sceptical of constructs and world views that are hostile to traditional religions as I remain sceptical of pretensions, usurpations actually, by the creator of illusions, the role of guides for society. Well it where my thinking is these days.

re fatimah

``WHY SHOULD I CARE IF BERNARD IS ARABO PHILE?

Because in your earlier post you implied that Bernard Lewis was a rabid pro-Israeli kind of a fellow whose writings were thus tainted. You look like a childish fool back-pedaling on that!

``Are you an ARAB ?``

Heavens, no! I am a decent fellow.

Saimashah,tahmad,sigalpha235.

So it really hits where it hurts.Does it?

If you do not see yourself in this mirror,ignore it!

It is meant for those who DO---and they KNOW it.Just enjoy the barbecue.

Muslim countries must be ETHICALLY(sic) cleansed of the kanjars & kanjarees.The idea is to hurt & offend those who ridicule Islam,muslims,& islamic values....you guys are at least neutrals.

But if you guys want to be some do gooders--learn to be equal opportunity offenders.

_________________________________________________

REPRODUCED for the benefit of others---& will be repeated once every so often.

[Some more ``good`` news for those who gloat about their adultery,fornication,drinking,and vicariously enjoy their wives,mothers & daughters` doubling as no-fee hookers & themselves acting as no-load pimps.

``The aroma of kabaab is no afar

Oh where is the sizzle,burn,& char``]

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I dont understand.

If Taliban kill, they are called Khemar rooge or other bad names; lengthy analyses are done to prove that etc. etc.

But

And may i ask why Indians (read Hindus) are not called murderers, rapists, and baby killers when they have killed 80,000 kashmiris and counting.

hamzad #123 ``Some more ``good`` news for those who gloat about their adultery,fornication,drinking,and vicariously enjoy their wives,mothers & daughters` doubling as no-fee hookers & themselves acting as no-load pimps.``

Are there any people on chowk whom have been gloating about their adultery? Or is it just your own sick mind that thinks of sex when thinking of mothers and daughters? How dare you post such rubbish!! And dont drag religion into the sewer your mind resides in. ``Muslims`` like you we dont need.

As for the article you quote, that is a western magazine, and their appreciation of Islamic culture is as much a reflection of the level of civilization of the west as the constant abuse of western civilization by people like you is a reflection of your jehalat.