Karo Kari

horrible, now i know what karo kari really is, and its so gruesome and cruel, God help us

dost mittar #151 Granted. Religion has been a mess in the west too, and i went too far in saying that the west had achieved peace and goodwill through religion. and certainly the west has not been known to turn the other cheek (as mullah omar and saddam found the hard way) either. nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to say that western civilization can be understood without understanding christianity. and it would be unrealistic to say that in the US today traditions rooted in christianity are not the backbone of society in many ways: christian charities that contribute enormously to abused women, the homeless, as well as to the poor across the world; the holiday season in December when people take time off from the rat race; the very concept of serious study (which started with the monastries in the first millenium AD) are all very positive aspects of religion in the west. That is what I meant. (As opposed to the negative aspects that abound in the subcontinent, from communal hatreds to terrorism to ripoff of the poor and so on).

{You guys need to understand the Message of Islam}

...i don`t give a $hit what the ``message`` is...just stop flooding here so i don`t have to scroll so much to read hamidm`s posts...

tahmed:
``And indeed religion can be a positive source of peace and tranquility and moral character, What exactly went on in the cave (or on the mount where the burning bush spoke to moses, or under the banyan tree where buddha sat and meditated) is not so important as the fact that religion can (hard though it may believe for us desis who are used to mobs attacking innocent people in the name of religion) be a source of peace and goodwill. The west has done it. So can we.``

Sorry, my brother of good tidings. The west has ``done it`` - a source of peace and goodwill - by making religion irrlevant except for going to church on Sundays on an optional basis, and not by adhering to it. It also helped that their Messenger suggested offering the other cheek when someone hit you on one.

hamidm #144 What you and dost mittar are saying are the implications of tahmedism. Not the philosophy itself. This is how I had defined ``my`` philosophy in my previous post: Our views should represent logical inferences that are based on facts, and should cross-check with common sense.

(As I said, although virtually entire human civilization rests on the above proposition, and as such I cannot unfortunately claim to be the inventor of human civilization - I am nevertheless honored to considered as such, if only by one individual in the entire universe, viz, Mr. Hamid).

More seriously, I will be happy to have anything I write (including my views on religion) judged by the above standard, just as I am only too pleased to poke holes in posts written by Brother Anew, Sri Jay, and other chowk luminaries using the same test.

On bremerism, I am afraid your description fails the tahmed test described above. Indeed, what you describe is precisely what the mullah claims when he talks of ``crusades`` by the west: not only is it conjecture, if flies in the face of common sense. The issue in the US is how to get out of Iraq leaving a civilized country behind that does not threaten its neighbors and does not become a nest of terrorism like Afghanistan has become. Nor does Bremer (who is essentially a contract employee of the US government) set the US middle east policy, nor is he responsible for military operations. He is not even in the inner circle that formulated the US policy in the middle east, which incidentally I support fully: as you said it, ``laatoN kay bhoot baatoN say nahiN mantay``.

Can I call this philosophy ``hamidism`` instead of bremerism, since that would be more accurate? I will then even be on your side in that case!!

Verily We have sent thee in truth as a bearer of glad tidings and a warner. But of thee no question shall be asked of Companions of the blazing fire. (2.119)

Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion. Say: ``The guidance of Allah that is the (only) guidance.`` Wert thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee then wouldst thou find neither protector nor helper against Allah. (2.120)

Those to whom We have sent the book study it as it should be studied; they are the ones that believe therein; those who reject faith therein the loss is their own. (2.121)

hamidm #144 And one more thing on the man in the cave. I am not saying the prophet sat around a round table with the angel dictating the message to him. I do believe that the prophet had an experience of some kind in the cave, that he relayed the message as he understood it to those around him, that the message was subsequently penned by various scribes (with the initial copies of the Quran in fact being somewhat different), and that the caliph usman then commissioned a standard version. So clearly there is room, for a ``slip between the cup and the lip`` (or between the experience in the cave and the standard version of the Quran). Nevertheless, it seems safe to say that the basic message of the Quran (which is poles apart from that of the maulvi, and which can be summarizd in one page as a set of values) is based on what the prophet originally related.

My belief above is based on archaeological facts (some time back the NYT reported on different versions of the Quran being studied even today in Europe just as the Dead Sea Scrolls and other aspects of biblical archaeology have been studied - although the muslim world is not ready as yet for this, no doubt it will be ready in a hundred years from now).

It does call for a leap of faith (with respect to the experience in the cave), but as long as one recognizes that and as long as one respects other people`s right to not share this faith, I dont see any problem. And indeed religion can be a positive source of peace and tranquility and moral character, What exactly went on in the cave (or on the mount where the burning bush spoke to moses, or under the banyan tree where buddha sat and meditated) is not so important as the fact that religion can (hard though it may believe for us desis who are used to mobs attacking innocent people in the name of religion) be a source of peace and goodwill. The west has done it. So can we.

#146 by rsaxena on December 15, 2003 10:20am PT
anew you lunatic, stop it

You guys need to understand the Message of Islam before declaring someone Lunatic who presents Islamic point of view on issues. The question was raised in a very objectionable view who will lead the Ummah. When I gave you guys the possible clue, then you started making fun of me. But making fun of Islam and Muslims is quite acceptable by all. You are proposing a selection between two and I am giving you the Men who are really going to lead the Ummah as per Islamic literature. Be civilised when you discuss and comment. I will not go to your standards even you abuse like tahmeed32 did on a previous board. Let me post something in series which will help to cure your Islam phobia.

THE MEANING OF ISLAM

Every religion of the world has been named either after the name of its founder or after the community and nation in which that religion took its birth. For instance, Christianity takes its appellation from the name of its prophet Jesus Christ; Zoroastrians from its founder zoroaster; and Judaism, the religion of the Jews, from the name of the tribe Judah (of the country of judea) wherein it took its birth. Similar is the case with other religions. But not so with Islam. This religion enjoys the unique distinction of having no such association with any particular person or people. The word ‘Islam’ does not confer any such relationship-for it does not belong to any particular person, people, or country. It is neither the product of any human mind nor is it confined to any particular community. It is a universal religion and its objective is to create and cultivate in man the quality and attitude of Islam.

Islam, as a matter of fact, is an attributive title. Whosoever possesses this attributive, may he belong to any race, community, country, or clan, is a Muslim. According to the Qur`an (the Holy Book of the Muslims), among every people and in all ages there have been good and righteous people who possessed this attribute of them were and are Muslims.

This automatically brings us to the question: What does Islam mean? And who is a Muslim?



ISLAM - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
‘Islam’ is an Arabic word and connotes submission, surrender, and obedience As a religion, Islam stands for complete submission and obedience to Allah and that is why it is called ‘ISLAM’. Everyone can see that the universe we live in is an orderly universe. There is law and order among all the units that comprise this universe. Everything is assigned a place in a grand scheme, which is working in a magnificent and superb way. The sun, the moon, the stars and in fact all the heavenly bodies are knit together in a splendid system. They follow an unalterable law and do not make even the slightest deviation from their ordained course. The earth rotates on its own axis and in its revolution round the sun scrupulously follows the path laid down for it. Similarly, everything in the world, from the little whirling electron to the mighty nebulae, invariably follows its own laws. Matter energy, and life-all obey their laws and grow and change and live and die in accordance with those laws. EVEN in the human world the laws of nature are quite manifest. Man`s birth, growth, and life are all regulated by a set of biological laws. He derives sustenance from nature in

Accordance with an unalterable law. All the organs of his body from the small tissues to the heart and the brain are governed by the laws prescribed for them. In Short, ours is a law-governed universe and everything in it is following the course that has been ordained for it. This powerful, all-pervasive law, which governs all that comprises the universe, from the tiniest specks of dust to the magnificent galaxies in high heavens, is the law of God, the creator and ruler of the universe. As the entire creation obeys the law of God, the whole universe, therefore, literally follows the religion of Islam-for Islam signifies nothing but obedience and submission to Allah, the Lord of the universe. The sun, the moon, the earth, and all other heavenly bodies are thus ‘Muslim’. So is the case with air, water, and heat, stones, trees, and animals. Everything in the universe is ‘Muslim’ for it obeys God by submission to his laws. Even a man who refuses to believe in God, or offers his worship to someone other than Allah has perforce to be a ‘Muslim’ as far as his bodily existence is concerned. For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body’s dissolution info dust after death, and every tissue of his muscles and every limb of his body follow the course prescribed for each by God’s law. His very tongue which, on account of his ignorance, advocates the denial of God or professes multiple deities, is in its very nature a ‘Muslim’. His head which he wantonly bows to other besides Allah is a born Muslim. His heart wherein, through his lack of true knowledge, he cherishes love and reverence for others, is ‘Muslim’ by intuition. These are all obedient to the divine Law, and their functions and movements are governed by the injunctions of that law alone. This, in short, is the real position of man and the universe. Let us now examine the problem in a different light. Man is so constituted that there are two aspects of his life: two distinct spheres of his activity. One is the sphere in which he finds himself totally regulated by the Divine Law. He cannot budge an inch or move a step away from it. Nor can he evade it in any way or from. In fact, like other creatures, he is completely caught in the grip of the law of nature and is bound to follow it. But there is another sphere of his activity as well. He has been endowed with reason and intellect. He has the power to think and form judgments, to choose and reject, and to adopt and spurn. He is free to adopt whatever course of life chooses. He can embrace any faith, adopt any way of life and formulate his living according to whatever ideologies he likes. He may prepare his own code of conduct or accept one formulated by others. He has been bestowed with free will and can chalk out his own course of behaviour. In this latter aspect, he, unlike the other creatures, has been given freedom of thought, choice, and action.

Both these aspects distinctly co-exist in man’s life.

In the first he, like all other creatures, is a born Muslim, invariably obeys the injunctions of God, and is bound to remain so. As far as the second aspect is concerned, he is free to become or not to become a Muslim. Here he has been given the freedom of choice-and it is the way a person exercises this freedom, which divides mankind into two groups: believers and non-believers. An individual who chooses to acknowledge his creator, accepts Him as his real Master, honestly and scrupulously submits to His laws and injunctions and follows the code He has revealed unto man for his individual and social life, thereby becomes a perfect Muslim. He has, so to say, achieved completeness in his Islam by consciously deciding to obey God in the domain in which he was endowed with freedom and choice. Now his entire life has become one of submission to God and there is no conflict in his personality. He is a perfect Muslim and his Islam is complete-for this submission of his entire self to the will of Allah is Islam and nothing but Islam. He has now consciously submitted to Him whom he had already been unconsciously obeying. He has now willingly offered obedience to the Master whom he already owed obedience unintentionally. His knowledge is now real for he has acknowledged the Being who endowed him with the power to learn and to know. Now his reason and judgment are set on an even keel-for he has rightly decided to obey the Being who bestowed upon him the faculty of thinking and judging. His tongue also is truthful for it expresses with conviction its confession of the Lord who gave it the faculty speech. New the whole of this existence is an embodiment of, in all spheres of life, he voluntarily as well as involuntarily obeys the laws of the same One God with the whole universe for he worships Him whom the whole world is for him and he is for God.

anew you lunatic, stop it

hamidm:
Either you or I have been misinterpreting tahmed. The way I interpret him, tahmed does not want to reform islam. For him, the only need is to understand islam properly, not to reform it. But maybe, he does mean reform without using the term.

tahmed,

.........you misunderstood my terminology..........tahmedism and bremerism are two diametrically opposed schools of thought..............here are the correct definitions:

tahmedism: a philosophy that claims that the koran is the only source of “true” islam and that the good book has been misinterpreted by the followers of satan, and if you pore over the book day and night you will find all the right answers and everything will be fine ....... it is really not a new concept and has been pushed by pervaiz ghulam ahmed and the ahl-i-koran .........the followers were previously known as pervaizis and are considered to be heretics by the mainstream ummah ..........it also claims that hadith, sunnah, shariah and other stuff produced by folks like imam hanifa, imam ghazali , maulana maudoodi, anew and naqshbandi have no place in islam ..........real islam was delivered in a cave (here we go again!) by a winged creature .........it claims that “real islam” is not in conflict with modernity, common sense and decency and therefore can be reformed on its own.........

bremerism: a philosophy that recognizes the fact that the message itself is deeply flawed ...........islam is not like any other religion and therefore needs outside intervention for any serious reform ............ the root cause is the fact that the koran itself claims to be the word of god and therefore infallible ..............it is also based on the principle of “laton kay bhoot baton say nahin mantay” .............bremerism’s ultimate aim is to hold mecca –I (like vatican-I and II) in a big tent at Arafat under the guidance of civilized (western) men and women ........... unfortunately the road to mecca-I is torturous and has to go through places like kabul, baghdad, damascus, tehran, jakarts, islamabad, qum and medina …… it will be a long and bloody journey.............

........... so the basic difference is that one calls for reading the book and the other calls for rewriting it like all those iraqi textbooks for school children ............

sigalph235 # 138

(Correct me if I am wrong but this is the same `pro-India` party whose chief got the anti-India army`s 90,000 potential war criminals freed, alleged war criminals who the supposedly anti-India army had left to rot as POWs in India`s hands, right? )

I think we are confusing here the Role played by Zulifqar Bhutto in 1971 - (It was a bad Role - and he has already met his fate)

and getting 90,000 POWs out of India. As a Prime Minister, it was his duty to get those POWs out - there is nothing wrong with that. These wretched soldiars just do what they are ordered & what they are paid to do. They do not take the decision to go to war.

Operation Giblater was conducted when Ayub Khan was the President. Bhutto may have given him a wrong advice - but the credit or discredit for the decision has to be lumped on Ayub Khan.

Times change - geo-political situations change - politics change.

Presently I would categorize PPP as a secular, liberal and a pro-India Party. Others in this comparison are PML & MMA.

Bravo to sigpalph235. You are absolutely right. These the things for which i love this person ZAB and purport for him to be my ideal and mentor. He would have commited many atrocities but what he gave to this nation, it cannot be redeemed. This nation will remained obliged to him for decades to come

Imran Hafeez
Islamabad

sigalhp #137 I will agree with you. Mullahism is a disease, and the mullah will not listen to reason - the only language the mullah understands is that of force.

anew: the above is for you as well. As for the rest of your posts below: i took the trouble of quickly reading your posts #133 #135, and it reveals a lot about the mullah mindset that you are exhibiting here:

1. You people are fundamentally hypocrites: You tried to hide behind hadith in the discussions I had with you, and that didnt work. You tried to twist words (first trying to wiggle out of the fact that the Quran does not call for hijab by claiming that ``hijab`` does not mean head covering. and now trying to wiggle out of the fact that you were unable to find any reference to an Islamic State in the Quran by claiming that the State does not imply coercion). Your latest hypocrisy is hiding behind the ``different interpretations`` of the Quran - one can interpret things differently on the margin. There is no room for different interpretations on the BASIC MESSAGE. And if the concept of an Islamic State was part of the basic message of Islam, the Quran would hav dealt with it explicitly and clearly as it does on issues like Mercy, Kindness, Forgiveness .

2. Your latest post is all about gaining power and caliphhoods and what not. Rubbish!!

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Re Nazarhayatkhan 136

``PPP got 60% of polled votes. It is a secular + pro-India Party.``

Correct me if I am wrong but this is the same `pro-India` party whose chief got the anti-India army`s 90,000 potential war criminals freed, alleged war criminals who the supposedly anti-India army had left to rot as POWs in India`s hands, right?

This is the same `pro-India` party whose chief planned the Operation Gibraltar to snatch Kashmir from India and, failing which, decided to eat grass to catch up with India on nuclear weapons, right?

Hmm; very intriguing definition of `pro-India`.