Saddam Hussein Lives!

#33

Ignorance is the best guarantee of blind faith.For faith is, ultimately, belief in the unknown and the unknowable.

Faith is not blind. If it is blind , it is not faith. Concept of `` Blind Faith `` will certailnly lead one towards ignorance and disbelief and thus declaration of `` unknown and unknowable `` . And this is weakness.
Curosity and inquiry starts the zing to know the ultimate truth. `` Ain-ul Yaqeen ``

post-Victorian puritanical extreme thought

My point is that whereever he discussed the religion and saints , his view is one sided and extreme. Its not moderate.

My shia friends are not learned and sunni people `` bus sirf sunn sunna kay he ilm hasal kar laytay haiN `` come on !!! What is this ?

What is the point of `` Hatered `` in religion or should I ask in ur religion ?

Well if it sounds like a recommendation to u `` Lucky me `` .
Its not aplogistic reason but truth. This was how it happened . You can`t negate it. Doctor knows the state of his patients and what dosage of medicine to give them.

sac

.... you ask, ``What hope is there for the ``average`` Muslim to become a citizen of the world? ``

....... the simple answer is there is no hope ....... maybe in a couple of hundred years, after islam has gone through a reformation and all muslims have come to realize that praying five times a day is a bad habit that leads to irrational behaviour in addition to painful ankles, muslims will become regular citizens of the world ...........

..... the problem is that most muslims don`t want to become citizens of the world - they want everyone else to become muslims .........if you travel from newyork to paris to moscow to shanghai to tokyo, and on to taipei, you see people living within the fairly narrowly defined bandwidth of modern/western civilization........ the minute you land in an islamic country you find yourself in a bizzare koranic land of oz.........it is a hopeless situation

sac:

of what hope do you hope for?
can there be light
when the doors to the ears
and windows to the eyes
paths to souls
are sealed by shouts
from pulpits and minarets
by visionless beards
with eyes blinded
by hermeneutic
hallucinations?

and

where some of us
---the people of the book
who can, do not read
understand nor follow
despite untold exhortations
leaving the field clear
for the flowing beards
and then we ( you and i)
have the temerity
to blame the maulvis
and wonder if there is any hope

hamidm #38 I dont see any reason to knock omar for compiling the Quran. There are indeed scholarly studies being conducted of the Quran between the time it was relayed (as we muslims believe) to the prophet Muhahmmed and the time it was compiled by Omar. This is the rational study of the Quran (the same way that the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient documents have been used to study the evolution of the Torah and of the Bible, without in any way diminishing the religious significance of those books), but no muslim country could permit such rational, scholarly studies without the mullahs taking to the streets. Talk about goats eating pages is OK, but anything rational is not. So these studies are being done in places like Germany by a handful of scholars as part of their intellectual persuits. And to my understanding, while there are some differences, in earlier versions and the ``official version`` that has remained unchanged since the days of Omar, the differences are not of major significance. Those differences come nowhere close to the difference between the Quran as it now stands and what you and SR both insist is ``Islam`` (the one where goats eat the homework, and Bokhari rules as the Final Plus One Prophet). Paganism is a more appropriate term, and to call it Islam is simply wrong by any logic. So, if you seriously believe that Islam is Quran plus the goat plus Bokhari plust the zillion other ornaments, then by all logic you should renounce this ``Islam`` as your religion. For myself, I prefer to understand the Quran for myself, and am satisfied that it does not provide any room fro goats, Bokharis or Maudoodis. Followers of the this Goat Religion (a useful term I think, for the religion followed believers in the goat incident, or followers of Bokharis nonsense or Maudoodis mischief) cannot by any logic be considered muslims.
Hope this is serious enough for you.

A question for SR,hamidm and Sameer:

What hope is there for the ``average`` Muslim to become a citizen of the world? Are Muslims forever doomed to losing their best and brightest to 3-car garages and air-conditioned homes as hamidm points out? What responsibility do these cultural Muslims have to their religion of birth? Is it a losing battle no matter what? Considering the number of Phds with flowing beards roaming campus halls and doctors financing mosques, what hope is there for Adbul?

later
-sac

MIRASI BUSH, MIRASI BLAIR, MIRASI KOFI

hamidm

I hope you`ll like it very much. I liked one skit better, which was about the mirasi who caught his wife with the zamindar. It kinda fits on Musharaff.


http://akhbar.urdupoint.com/columns/naukhaiz_akhtar/05-05-03.shtml

tahmed,

..... we appreciate your attempt at trying to laugh off a serious subject, but the fact remains that islam has the misfortune of being a fairly modern religion ........ a lot of historians have written about the origin of the koran, the character of the prophet and all the shennigans that went on during the early days of cooking up this religion .......... even the goat is a historical figure - there might be some dispute about whether aisha simply made up that story to discredit her opponents - but the fact remains that there are a lot of holes in our holy book .......... goat or no goat, great mishief was done by abu bakr, othman and his scribes, omar and mirwan ........ not to talk of satan himself, who tried to interfere every now and then .................

SR/Hamidm: I had the title to a million acres of beachfront property in Florida - except the alligator chewed it to shreds. I then invested in a farm of slave girls in Africa - but the elephants trampled the deed to pieces. I then spent a weekend to prepare the Unified Field Theory of Everything - except it got sucked into a Black Hole. And so I said the hell with it, and sat down and wrote my magnum opus, a novel that was to get me the Nobel Prize for literature - except that this damn goat wandered in from somewhere...

tahmed302 #34 [``...I remain astounded at the stupidity of ... religious observances...``]

Yes, quite agreed. You mean to say stupid observances like a frantic crowd uttering gibberish and hurling rocks at a heap of dirt, or a dense crowd stampeding the old and frail in a mad rush to circle around a meteorite. Or were you referring to the ritualistic washing of the mouth, face, hands and feet (after having done it once already) only because of an accidental passing gas, yet not even bothering to so much as wipe the orifice that exhaled the amonia?

...SR

I seriously doubt that something as important as the most important part of a fiercely religious communnity could be lost for carelessly placing the leaves near a goat. With all the power and a thriving Muslim community for about 20-30 years must have many people who remembered most of it or most of it was memorized by a group of few hardcore followers.

The whole episode suggests many things often considered taboo within Muslim communities. Obviously Abu Bakar and Omar did not consider it prime importance to collect and compile holybook - in other words, they never had quran khawnis. Second and more important point is that perhaps quran was not taken as important as most of Muslims now generally take. Third, goat episode might have been a lame excuse for removing some portions for political reasons of the ruling tribe, a non-Qureshi Meccan tribe, Banu Umayya. However, those lost pages would have been known and memorized by many. So the question of losing them for good is not possible. Hindus has memorized Vedas for centuries without any problem. Why should Muslim had such a problem with all the power they had at that time - perhaps intellectual barrenness? lower IQ?

hamidm2 #30 I checked out scapegoat, and indeed the term is based on religion. Not Islam though, but the granddaddy of Islam, Judaism. Seems like on Yom Kippur they get rid of all their sins by putting them on the head of a goat.
The goat is of course symbolic, and that is how it is able to carry wine, woman, and song (the sins) all at the same time on its head.
My condolences on having half your family shia. At least we sunnis are not expected to beat ourselves regularly because some man lost his neck in trying to be king.
I remain astounded at the stupidity of these religious observances. All these people have to do is read the Quran to realize that the fact that Ali was the prophet`s grandson means nothing. He was just another ambitious man. There is no nepotism in islam, no dynasties...

goats rule! ...... go out and fornicate without fear

The Arab idol worshipers fabricated hadiths and claimed that prophet Muhammad stoned a couple (Maiz and Gamidiyye) to death. Since they realized that hadiths are not enough to abrogate the clear verses in chapter 24, they even fabricated a ``verse`` supporting stoning and attributed it to God. They tried to inject this satanic verse into Quran. When they failed, they fabricated foolish stories which only the people who are described in 10:100 believe. According to their story, the `stoning verse` was recorded in Quran during the time of Muhammad; but just after his death, a goat entered Aisha`s house and ate the page on which that verse was inscribed. Thus, the stoning verse has been abrogated physically. This story can be found in Ibn Magah, Nikah, 36/1944 and Ibn Hanbal, 5/131,132,183; 6/269.

How can a verse of a perfect scripture, which was completed during Muhammad`s lifetime, be abrogated by a goat? As an answer to this question, Ibn Qutayba, a famous scholar, in his book entitled ``Solving the Contradictions Among Hadiths`` stated that ``the goat is a holy animal``. And he asked a counter question: ``Why not believe in God`s power? As He destroyed the people of Aad and Thamud, He is also able to destroy His revelations by using even a goat!``

..........................i am never eating a goat again - lamb chops only!

joieya #31 [“…Curosity is the start of faith….”]

Quite to the contrary, curiosity and inquiry, provided they are unencumbered by fear, are a threat to faith. Ignorance is the best guarantee of blind faith. For faith is, ultimately, belief in the unknown and the unknowable. By definition, it has to be blind. Rationalizations come only after the fact.

[“… ``Why I am not a Christian `` by Russel , I think the guy has extreme views and its possible that his vision didn`t go beyond the middle age Church state and surely couldn`t get the real message of Lord Jesus. …”]

Again, quite the opposite. Russell was actually a rare voice of reason and moderation in an ocean of post-Victorian puritanical extreme thought. If you take the trouble of refreshing your memory by re-reading his book you will find that he has a sweeping view of history up until his contemporary age. Most of his arguments are empirical and based on common sense. His logic against the argument of ‘First Cause’ and his famous ‘crate of oranges’ analogy to debunk the illogic of “redress of injustice in the hereafter” are examples of a fresh and clear headed thought.

[“…The goat phenomenon is absurd. I have lot of Shia freinds , Arabs , non Arabs , Pakistanis , Indians. Have discussed a lot with them but this goat phenomenon, never heard of it. …”]

A plant is known by its fruit and a man is know by the company he keeps. Your Arab, Pakistani and Indian Shia friends are obviously not too learned in their own history and tradition. You say you never ``heard`` of it. You must be a ``sunni``... as the joke among the learned shias goes, sunni`s get their religious techings from hearing, i.e., ``bus sirf sunn sunna kay he ilm hasal kar laytay haiN``.

Okay, forget about Shia sources. Look up Khilafat aur Malukiat by Syed Abual Allah Maudoudi, even he has made a reference to the goat, though he is not at all a hater of the Umar-Usman-Ayesha-Muawia-Mirwan camp, as many Shia authors are. Maudoudi is no liberal or shia. He is as wahabi as they come.

[“… (alcohol) was not forbidden at once but gradually…”]

This apologists’ argument really irks me. Why did the Prophet have to pussy-foot and beat around the bush on this issue. Was he afraid of a revolt by the likes of the hot-headed Omar-ibn-al-Kahttab? Was he playing politics on this issue because many of his followers were recovering alcoholics? Wasn’t it Omar who, as he led the prayer, slurred bad enough to be an embarrassment so that the Prophet had to say don’t PUI (pray under the influence)? If it was to be a Law why the hell play politics with it? For usury and pork there is no beating around the bush. They were called haram, end of story. Don’t you see the obvious expediency and politics in these actions?

Also, where you claim “…it was forbidden…”, the actual language used is not the same as for pork and usury. It sounds more like a recommendation to me, because it suggests that those of you who still don’t quit shall be losers. This after having acknowledged that (it) has few benefits and many ills. Sounds like a very good advice to me, but certainly does not sound like a dictum of prohibition.

…SR

# 22

Well mate I think it was a beautiful mistake .
Curosity is the start of faith. Who am I ? From where I came and where will I go ? What is the objectivity of my being ?
`` Why I am not a Christian `` by Russel , I think the guy has extreme views and its possible that his vision didn`t go beyond the middle age Church state and surely couldn`t get the real message of Lord Jesus. Every bird flies according to his limits. `` Kabootar ba Kabootar Baz ba Baz ``.

The goat phenomenon is absurd. I have lot of Shia freinds , Arabs , non Arabs , Pakistanis , Indians. Have discussed a lot with them but this goat phenoemon, never heard of it.

About alcohalism , its a disease and is curable . It was not forbidden at once but gradually. First it was stated that its not good. Secondly , prayer was forbidden for those who were drunken. and then finally it was declared forbidden. Path is same , time is same but only for whom who desires it.

Regards,

SR #28 You have a sense of humor. I will grant you that. We are indeed always in short supply of humor on chowk. Please check with your goat to see if there is anything in the missing pages about the need for chowk posters to lighten up.

tahmed .......

.............. this poor goat might be the original scapegoat but most shias do believe that othman and his imbecile scribes conspired to keep a lot of chapters out of the koran ..........first there were the satanic verses and then this - editors and publishers, as usual, play havoc with the author`s original work - even if he happens tpo be the almighty ............... trust me on this - half my family is shia and they are still upset at abubakr and othman and mirwan ........... i think the poor goat might be symbolic like the homework eating dog ...............

......... i have to look it up to see if the word ``scapegoat`` is really based on this scripture eater ...........