Square Pegs in Round Holes

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Urstruly

I have responded to your post on `Justice for half a Man`.


Echoboom,

I have clarified a few things on the `disowning` issue for you. Please do read it.


-Manto

#16 Urstruly!

I didnt think of the questions--so was quite impressed with them. Quality of questions leads to quality debates.

urstruly:

I was not offended as I clarified in one of my posts. I do not hold any dogmatic beliefs which I should care to defend, no matter what. In my engineering research work, it was different. There, if I presented a solution to some problem, I defended it whenever there was any occasion. I could use mathematical arguments (objective) in such defence.

Here on Chowk, almost everything is subjective. Your viewpoint is as good as mine or any body else`s because it`s based on personal belief, preference, and background. That`s the reason that I don`t have any `supp` in my `patari`. If this disappoints you, I`m sorry for it.

Have a nice day.

Mohammad Gill

nasah:

I spent better part of my life as a round peg in a round hole. During this period, I worked single-mindedly on research problems in hudraulics of rivers and alluvial channels. I had not paid much (serious) attention to the metaphysicsal issues of religion, etc. during that period of time. I stayed away from politics also although the ongoing political troubles closer to home or internal to home did affect me. I however never tried to formulate a solution for them. Although I am still actively working in my profession but I`m considering retirement now.

Since I could not continue with research due to given circumstances, I had some spare time available at my hands, which I have spent doing some `light` reading and writing. You might like to read two of my essays which I published at Chowk recently to know about my trend of thought (if you are really interested in me as a human and intellectual being) although my nickname `freethinker` should explain it all. These essays are as follows:

1. The Metaphysics of Religion
2. Three Hard Questions and Quest for their Solution

Regards,

Mohammad Gill

Gill Sahib

I apologize if I have offended you but that was not my intention. As a matter of fact the last two posts were merely an expression of my disappointment and frustration. I see that you have a keen interest in philosophy and history; so do I. Your handle is freethinker. You are sensible, calm and mature. So I was expecting that you will bless us with your thought process thus enriching our level of consciousness. But all you have done so far is to collate some other people`s ideas and present it to us. This is an interactive forum, we are more interested in your thought process, your interpretation, and your bias. You don`t even care to defend what you present here. I am still waiting for that proverbial snake, to which the the punjabi language referes to as ``kehRa sup kaddho gay``. That ``sup`` is still not out. I am frustrated.

a delicious title -- Dr. Gill, I know you don`t want to get personal -- but lemme ask you one anyway --

Do you consider yourself a Square Peg in the Hole of Urstruly`s Islam or in Hamidm`s Islam, Dr. Gill...:-)

Correction:
In my last post, there are a couple of spelling mistakes. I am not a `bureaubrat` either.
I intended to write `bureaucrat` which came out in the post as bureaubrat, which is a perfectly meaningful word but I didn`t mean to use it. It should be read as `bureaucrat`. Another correction is that I wanted to say `I am a simple man` instead of `I am a simole man`. Thanks for bearing with me.

Mohammad Gill

urstruly:
You seem to have constructed a fictional picture about me and have some imaginary notions about me and my attitude. I am a simole person. You called me a bureaubrat/technocrat although I have never imagined myself like that. It`s true that I am holding a managerial position (it`s a job that needs to be done) and my picture on the board conforms with my dress code but these are the things that I take in a normal stride. I didn`t have anyother recent (the picture on the board is some three years old) presentable picture handily available.

It is true also that I abstain from discussing unrelated and personal issues on Chowk; it is probably a result of my professional training. You may not agree with it but this is how I am. I prefer to discuss the contents of a published article/essay and choose to refrain from making personal comments. In the technical research papers, we were not allowed to use the pronoun ``I``. We were not allowed to criticize others` work by making personal remarks, laudatory or derogatory.

I usually try not take offense from personal remarks which others might make about me and my personal being, even though they may not be very pleasant. You may call me a prosaic person; again that is how I am. I am not writing this post out of any ill-will towards anybody but it might help the readers to understand me a little better. Nobody is above criticism and I cannot avoid it too.

I receive consolation and a sense of humility from: ``munn aanam keh munn daanam``. I know my weaknesses better than any body else does. Wishing you all well,

Mohammad Gill

Manto

I have posted an answer to your questions on my board Justice For Half-a-Man because I did not want to clutter Gill`s board with irrelevant discourse. I am much interested to know about your evaluation of the reply though.

I hope you understand that I was only trying to yank your chords in my last reply addressed to you. I also tried to yank Gill`s chords but he is as non-committal and tight-lipped as a bureaucrat. I can bet my moon (word edited because of chowk filter) that he wrote this article to project himself indirectly but too bad he is too closed to himself. Something that Inquirer has pointed out to as well. There is a proverb in Punjabi to describe such situations, which goes something like this: rondi yaraaN noon, le le keh naaN bharaNwaN da.

Saima Shah:

You could ask me these questions directly. I don`t bite (most of the time).

Mohammed:

Square Pegs in Round Holes just about says it all...the conventional or the ordinary sprinkled with the misfits makes up for the ocean of life...

...t

``Iqbal philosophy``

If I may be excused by the Chowk intellectuals for saying this: Iqbal Urdu poetry was original but Iqbal philosophy was not-- his poeticized Fascistic ideas did quite a bit of damage to the Muslim politics and continue to hurt Muslim Psyche on the subcontinent...

Gill:
I was out for a few days. Then I saw your article and initial paragraphs made me unhappy because I thought you were going to denigrate Rashid Talib Sahab. Then I found, after going through your article that you compared him to the likes of Dirac and Kuhn.

There is a convention in US that the conclusion of your write-up must be in the first paragraph. That would have helped a reader in getting oriented for reading you interesting article.

By the way, I have noticed that your writing style either parries or fails to reach a commitment even in your scientific writings on Chowk. Is this deliberate?

PS. Thanks alot, however, for providing the background on Rashid Sahab. HE IS A PROGRESSIVE MUSLIM.

I am pleased to acknowledge and appreciate the various interacts. I like to comment on a couple of them.

SameerJB`s perceptive observation, ``Some tried their hands after retirement or after achieving great success in their respective areas...,`` is very true. It is difficult to achieve the same degree of success in an area in which one did not receive sufficient proficiency compared with the one in which one was formally and fundamentally trained. Once one has reached a certain pinnacle or watershed, if you will, in a selected field, it becomes frustrating later on when one finds incapable of contributing with exceptional excellence. Tolstoy experienced such frustration in his later years due to feelings of such an incapability or incapacity, (see his `Confessions`). Some of such scholars, scientists, and writers then divert into other fields in which they may (or may not) shine brilliantly. I don`t consider them square pegs because they had been round pegs in round holes in their productive years. The retirement engagements are at best pastimes and not professions.

Regarding razz`s comments on Iqbal, I hadn`t implied negatively on Iqbal`s competence as a philosopher; he had a Ph.D. in philosophy. He had read philosophy, both western and oriental, comprehensively. But he devoted his life to metaphysics - metaphysics of Islam or religion. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the modern Muslim world.

Instead of commenting on Iqbal`s philosophy myself for which I am not sufficiently competent, let me quote from C.A. Qadir, a prominent Pakistani philosopher who had contributed several chapters in ``A History of Muslim Philosophy``, edited by M.M. Sharif, ``Logical Positivism has caused a revolution in the field of philosophy and is regarded as a turning point in the history of philosophy. Though its main purpose was the elimination of metaphysics and putting sciences on firm foundations, in actual practice it helped provide philosophy with a new field of enquiry and a new methodology...Logical positivism was unheard of in Pakistan till 1954. It is strange that Allama Muhammad Iqbal in his lectures on the `Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam` mentions dialectical materialism and psycho-analysis and criticses them because of their atheism, but does not mention logical positivism or atheistic existentialism, though they were equally vociferous in their denunciation of God and religion.....Logical positivism was born round about 1918...`` I`ll end my exposition with an uncategorical statement that I am tremendously impressed by Iqbal and his beautiful poetry. I love it. I have been reading Iqbal since my early shool days.

Mohammad Gill

Manto:

excellent questions. Look forward to the reply.

nasah:

well said.

I meant a `third option` not `third alternative` which is wrong for the obvious reasons.