Muslims Vs. Modernity

................ both shiraz and tom friedman are barking up the wrong date palm .............. the muslims cannot be reformed without changing islam .......... as long as the muslims keep on believing that the book is the infallible word of god that cannot be changed, nothing will change ................ we need a new version of the book that starts off with something the poor muslims can understand instead of the inane ``alif laam meem`` ..........

A. Shiraz,

Great article, very profound.



To Urstruly (Mr. S Mohammed) re#1:

``A fundamentalist seems to know everything about religion, and nothing about anything else.``

Open your mind to something else and you`ll understand. Islam is a metaphor for conservative (non liberal) fanaticism in the diagram.

Satire

re: Shiraz

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It is the proximity to Islam that creates the Taliban of today and the marauding, pillaging and now glorified Arab tribes of yesterday.
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Your analysis makes the incorrect assumption that the Taliban-system was Islamic. It was not. The Taliban`s Ministry of Vice and Virtue forced people to grow beards and offer prayers. But ``compulsory worship`` is not as pure and superior as voluntary worship. Thus, the Taliban was inadvertently creating a bogus society that was Islamic in form, but not in spirit. Without democracy and freedom of religion and thought, nobody can become a true Muslim.

Therefore, Islam and modernization are not incongruous. I urge you to read the commentaries of Rachid Al Ghanouchi and Abdul Karim Soroush to understand why rationalism and free thought are roads towards Islam, not away from it.

Shiraz,

I agree with the central premise, but the your case here is poorly made and rather confusing.

Thanks,
Avkrishna

Ariel Shiraz,

Can you give a brief description of who a modern muslim is? I mean, the salient features or ingredients that go into making a modern muslim. You missed out on this little detail in your otherwise remarkably odious, malevolent, guache and tacky article.

MB

Wonderful dear, Shiraz. What is being propagated in the name of Islam today, especially in Pakistan, is not Islam but `deene fassaad` of the stinking LS- mullah. Don`t worry about criticism. Bulle Shah had said,``Such aakhaan te bhambar machda``. Let the `Bhambar` much. This will be a great service to the Muslims. Keep it up, dear. More later on. I would like to have direct contact with you, if possible.

Neural postings.

a) Muslims societies and sects where women are given an equal status appear to elevate their living standards as well as humanitarian/sociological parameters. Not just with the rich or upper middle class, but lso with the feudal, the royal, the lower middle class and the poor. As a very brief example - a large number of taxi drivers operating rented cars were able to graduate to ``owner-driven`` status on the strength of special loans aimed at educated/employed women. Many of these drivers were Muslims, who have no qualms about admitting this as an essential step towards moving up the ladder ``for the sake of the children``.

b) The onset of the Internet and easy availbility of printed matter shall help this evolution of women in restrictive Muslim societies. I know for a fact that this scares the devil out of a particular brand of Muslims, who are now running around trying to keep newspaper prices high and out of reach of women, for example.

We live and die by many truths.

Luckily, the finite nature of ``Muslim terrorism`` lies in the simple fact that they treat women like vessels. This, in itself, gives hope to the rest of us in the world.

you say ``islam segregates and discreminates against women, condones and perpetuates slavery to this day

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`` You are mixing cultural rituals and belief systems of a given society with Islam. Get your facts straight please!

You say ``Muslims have to recognize that as they westernize that the idea of liberty, fraternity and equality are not islamic ideals``. Thank you for enlightening us. Then You threw some kind of logic regarding westernization and modernazation?

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Read your article twice, i cannot get my head around it. What on earth are you trying to say?

Some Randon Thoughts:

I think China should be placed next to India in the second quadrant. Similarly Nazi germany should alos be placed in the second quadrant.

Second world war was fought between all the secular nations of that time.

Please do not take me wrong but most of your thoughts about Islam are based on less then enough information.

Liberty without boundries is dangerous.

Asfand

mr shiraz`s article is so stupid that is is quiet funny. infact it is better than the ``dilbert`` cartoon i read today.

good job shiraz, keep the fun going :)

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Islam demands submission from its adherents. Believes in immutability of ``that book``. And muslims desire a dominant role for Islam ( a RIGID philosophy ) in any society... at political level, cultural level, everywhich way.

All that is totally incompatible to the very nature of free thinking people. A society can progress only when it has all the freedoms to question everything and find answers to them. It is the inquiring minds of Edison, Graham bell, Wright brothers, etc, etc... that made the western civilization what it is today. A RIGID philosophy that would have declared such free thinking people blasphemous/heresy would have been a total disaster for the progress of western civilization.

At a sub-conscious level, the inherent biological desire for progress in even the hardcore Islamist makes him understand these realities. He wants to get a piece of the action. That`s what makes him stand outside every western embassy in long lines. But then, wait a minute, there is another sub-conscious feeling in an Islamist. He is now seeking the refuge of a civilization that progressed in the absence of his beloved philosophy. All that he believed since his childhood, all the indoctrination that he received since his diaper years is proved wrong. His ego is hurt. It`s like the adverse side reaction to a disease curing drug.

More on this later......

EDITORIAL: The diabolical nexus

This newspaper has reported in its June 17 issue that the maulvi of a mosque in Green Town, a locality in Lahore, sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy Talha. As generally happens in such cases, the boy was sent to the mosque by his parents to learn the Holy Quran. The news makes clear that while the police has apprehended the maulvi, the parents of the unfortunate victim are facing pressure from some religious outfits to drop the case and not press charges. We are not surprised either by the incident or the fact that some religious groups should deem fit to come out in support of a criminal. Such sorts are notorious for committing acts of buggery to a point where bawdy jokes about them are quite common. Similarly, to think that such groups or personages are inclined to act more morally than us mortals is laughable.

So why should we be writing about it if we are not surprised by the incident and its aftermath? Clearly, just because something wrong happens frequently does not make it right. It is the responsibility of the state and society to ensure that non-consensual sex (as opposed to consensual sex) and paedophilia must be treated as crimes and their perpetrators punished. So if there is evidence against this fellow, he must get what he deserves under the law. It is ridiculous that in a country where consensual sex is treated as a crime because it is deemed a sin or where two consenting adults cannot even marry each other without being killed or arrested, religious groups should come out in support of a paedophile.

But there are a few other aspects of this problem also. Does the government have any data on the number of mosques in various cities and across the country? The answer is no. There are guesstimates but no real verifiable data. Why? Because mosque-building remains an unregulated business. We know how the element of sanctity linked with the mosque is utilised by charlatans to grab land and how it is important for ‘graduates’ of madrassahs to find mosques because they are otherwise unemployable. The problem is that just like the mosques are unregulated, so the government is unaware of who occupies them and to what purpose. Police officers in Karachi know that religious gangs fight over possession of mosques and use these places to brainwash people, generate funds and hide terrorists, and even to make illegal commercial use of them.

There is a diabolical nexus among these elements: the fundamentalist preaching madrassah and sectarian mosque, and other acts of bigotry and terrorism. In fact, what the maulvi has done in Green Town is a criminal act at the low end of this murky spectrum. Can something be done?

Yes. Given clear evidence that many mosques and madrassahs are involved in sectarian and other terrorism, the state needs to firmly decide to regulate their affairs. It must legislate to decide the optimum number of mosques required for purely religious purposes determined by the population of a locality, acceptable noise and congestion levels, and the capacity of each mosque. Mosque-building must be regulated and no one should be allowed to construct a mosque anywhere he likes. Sectarian sermons should be declared a crime. The sub-literature in Islam is overflowing with sectarianism. It is the modern state’s responsibility to keep the lid firmly on it. The state must ensure that all mosques are listed with the religious ministry and all khateebs are vetted by the ministry. Religious circles of course are likely to fall, ironically, on the liberal argument and say it is not the state’s responsibility to regulate religion. True, but only if it can be proved that religion is not translating itself into societal strife and violence. The evidence here is that it is. It then becomes the responsibility of the state to secure the life and property of its citizens and ensure that no harm comes to them on the basis of their beliefs.

But none of this can happen if the state has someone like Ijaz-ul Haq manning the religious ministry and writing op-eds in newspapers that clearly show where his bias resides. A good step taken by the government is to nominate enlightened members to the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body that had almost become comic because it was stuffed previously by literalists. Now the government needs to do the same with the religious ministry. *

So you are trying to say that Nazi germans were Muslims, right? They were westernized but were not modernized or is it the other way around that Muslims were Nazi Germans and modernized but not westernized....oh I give up. What the hell are you trying to say.