Fashion Or Lack Thereof Re: # 22

the former is based on dispassionate analysis; the latter is what my understanding tells me "in the nearest language"!

Fashion Or Lack Thereof Re: # 20

...... just read the last line of my interact!

Fashion Or Lack Thereof Re: # 18; MeiraJ
[[Problem with you "Muslim-minded" people, and your monopolizing of this 'religious ethic' is just this]]

had you known anything about me, "muslim-minded" would be the last term you'd used to describe me!! .... LOL!!

It\'s Politics Uber Alles In Kashmir ..... And India Re: # 74; tahmed sahib

nb .... a BJP fanatic??? ..... who would have thought eh?!

Fashion Or Lack Thereof Re: # 13; MeiraJ & Quin ... various

It has indeed become fashionable amongst circles of a feminist bend to take the argument of non-gender specificity and apply it liberally .... be it in the context of "metro-sexualism" or even God. Of course the God of the Bible and Quran is male .... absolutely no doubt from the language of these two books.

It has also become fashionable amongst Muslims to try to "retro-fit" every thing seemingly progressive and "prove" its origins in the Quran ..... like your attempt here of proving the non-gender specificity of God from the Quran. Herein lies the problems the Muslims have suffered so far .... everything there is worth learning/doing has already been written down/said openly or "covertly" in the good Book! and it is the "inability" of the reader to spot it in its "beauty" as it were! ..... you guys are indded intent on "proving" absolutely anything from the book!! .... and with that level of stupidity, who could argue?

As for me, as one of my favourite writers once said, "what precisely is the difference between a non-existant male and a non-existant female?"

It\'s Politics Uber Alles In Kashmir ..... And India Re: # 68; dost

thanks for the "try"; surely you are in a better position to answer than those who may have "dil mein chor" so to speak!

any right minded Indian Muslim should think twice about the possible repercussions elsewhere in India; they have only just got over the 1947 fiasco

It\'s Politics Uber Alles In Kashmir ..... And India Re: # 56; dost_mittar

Don't you think that would be setting the wrong precedent? Where do you think it will stop?

Fashion Or Lack Thereof I don't know why, but whilst reading this article, I was constantly distracted in my mind by the Billie Piper hit "because I want to"!

What Talibanization? Paracha sahib,

I have now read quite a number of your articles on Chowk and must say I appreciate your honesty about the reality on the groud. Its a difficult job under the circumstances but someone has to do it .... and you do it well!

Mahboba Andyar: A Poem Re: # 34; zeemax

nothing to do with me mate

Brick Lane is About Immigrants Making Difficult Choices I only ever got around to watch the film recently .... so can't compare with the book

It does use stereotypes .... but stereotypes that ARE THERE already; doesn't make them up ex nihilo! .... unfortunately

I enjoyed it .... especially the part where the old man goes to the "meeting of radicals" and talks about "the defence of Islam"! not a bad character at all ..... just a victim of circumstances in my opinion ..... like we all are I suppose; products of our collective life experiences

Certain thing, of course, could have been presented better ... but isn't that the case with virtually everything in life?

Mahboba Andyar: A Poem Re: # 18; crazyghan

I think you are addressing/reprimanding the wrong person there; quin is the one who wrote this poem and had to take all this nonsense for it too!

Ahmedabad Blasts: Numbed Apathy and The Conspiracy Of Our Resilience as for the noise in the background, for me it is less about "winning" and more about the truth .... a concept lost on some.

by beating the drum louder and louder, the only person one can delude is oneself; looks like that objective has been achieved for you (and you alone) so congratulations!

Ahmedabad Blasts: Numbed Apathy and The Conspiracy Of Our Resilience Re: # 274; Regards and masanamuthu

no worries guys.

Regards, that is exactly what I have been trying to advocate. Like the Iliad and Odyssey which are a collective heritage of western civilisation (along with the Old and New Testaments of course); one doesn't have to be a believing jew/christian/pagan to recognise and admire the literary beauty that exists in these manuscripts.

Stay in touch and kind regards

Akram

Ahmedabad Blasts: Numbed Apathy and The Conspiracy Of Our Resilience Re: # 269; masadi

most of that is "references" that you so craved

and what exactly do you mean by your last sentence? .... now you won't be two-timing on Tahir would you? wherever it is you are disappearing to!

Khuda Hafiz (or G'night ... as you like it in the gora-lingo!)

Ahmedabad Blasts: Numbed Apathy and The Conspiracy Of Our Resilience I do apologise for the length of this article(I have endevoured to shorten it as much as possible), but it is important to bring it out in the open. References at the bottom, thanks.

[[In his debates with an Isma'ili adversary, Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/934 [q.v.]), chief lieutenant
to the Isma'ili da'iof Rayy, and later chief da'ihimself, al-Razi faces a Mu'tazili argument that
harks back to Stoic sources: God's mercy would not deny humanity the guidance of leaders
inspired with revealed knowledge of God's own will and His plan for human destiny. Al-Razi
answers that God has provided what we need to know, not in the arbitrary and divisive gift of
special revelation, which only foments bloodshed and contention, but in reason, which belongs
equally to all. Prophets are impostors, at best misled by the demonic shades of restless and
envious spirits. But ordinary men are fully capable of thinking for themselves and need no
guidance from another. One can see their intelligence and ingenuity in the crafts and devices
by which they get their living, for it is here that they apply their interest and their energy.
Intellectuals who have not devoted their energies, say, to mechanical devices would be baffled
by the skills and techniques of such men; but all human beings are capable of the independent
thinking that is so critical to human destiny. It is only because the philosopher has applied
himself to abstract speculations that he has attained some measure of understanding in
intellectual matters.

Asked if a philosopher can follow a prophetically revealed religion, al-Razi openly retorts: 'How
can anyone think philosophically while committed to those old wives' tales, founded on
contradictions, obdurate ignorance, and dogmatism (muqim 'ala 'l-i¦htilafat, musirr 'ala 'l-djahl wa
'l-taqlid)?' Al-Razi takes issue with ritualism for what he sees as its obsession with unseen and
unseeable sources of impurity; but he also combats the natural tendency of his contemporaries
to think of philosophy as a dogmatic school or even a sect, their expectation that a philosopher
should believe and behave as Socrates or Plato did. Like many philosophers, he has difficulty
explaining to others that philosophical disagreements and divergences of outlook are not a
scandal but a source of vitality. A philosopher, he urges, does not slavishly follow the actions and
ideas of some master. One learns from one's predecessors, to be sure, but the hope is to surpass
them. Al-Razi admits that he will never be a Socrates, and cautions against anyone's expecting
in short order to rival Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Chrysippus,
Themistius or Alexander of Aphrodisias. But he also affirms a belief in progress, at least for
individuals, and denies that one is trapped within the teachings of the great founders of
traditions: 'You must realise,' he tells Abu Hatim, 'that every later philosopher who commits
himself creatively (idjtahada), diligently, and persistently to philosophical inquiry where subtle
difficulties have led his predecessors to disagree, will understand what they understood and
retain it, having a quick mind and much experience of thought and inquiry in other areas.
Rapidly mastering what his predecessors knew and grasping the lessons they afford, he readily
surpasses them. For inquiry, thought and originality make progress and improvement
iinevitable.' The smallest measure of original thought, even if it does not reach unrevisable
truth, al-Razi insists, helps to free the soul from its thrall in this world and secure for us that
immortality which was so wrongly described and so vainly promised by the prophets.

The Soul, al-Razi argues in such works as his Kitab al-'Ilm al-ilahior 'Theology', and On the five
eternals, both now lost, but well represented by fragments, paraphrases, descriptions and
refutations, was one ofqfive eternal things that antedate the cosmos. The other four were God,
matter, time and space. Space is the void. It may or may not have atoms in it. Time, like space,
is absolute, not relative to bodies in motion, as in Aristotle. Being absolute, time is eternal.
Motion is not. For matter, in itself, is inert; its motion stems from the activity of soul. Soul, the
world soul, initially stood apart from matter, in a spiritual realm of her own. She yearned,
however, to be embodied. And God, like a wise father, understanding that Soul learns only by
experience, allowed her to embroil herself here, as a king might allow his headstrong son into a
tempting but in many ways noxious garden, not out of ignorance, unconcern, or even
powerlessness or spite, but out of understanding that only through experience will the boy's
restlessness abate. In the case of Soul's entry into materiality, chaos was the first result, as she set
matter stirring in wild and disordered motion. God, in His grace, intervened, imparting
intelligence of His own to the world that Soul's impetuous desire had formed. As an immanent
principle, intelligence gave order to the world, stabilising its motions and rendering them
comprehensible. But it also gave understanding to the Soul itself, allowing her to recognise her
estrangement in this world and seek a return from exile. It is this striving for return that gives
meaning to all human strivings in the realm of life.

Only by such a theory, al-Razi insists, can creationists hope to overcome the elenchus of the
eternalists, who deny creation altogether. A quasi-gnostic quasi-Platonic formatio mundi, then,
not creatio ex nihilo, is the sole workable hypothesis which al-Razi can offer on behalf of the
world's temporal origination, as opposed to its eternal, Plotinian emanation or its perpetual
existence as a Democritean or Epicurean mechanism. Clearly the materialists, al-Razi reasons,
improperly ignore the life and intelligence that course through nature, giving directed and
stable movement to otherwise inert and passive matter. As for the Neoplatonic Aristotelians,
their theory of emanation leads them to fudge (as Aristotle had done) on the inertness of matter.
For, by treating the natural order as eternal, they seem to make motion and ordering form
inherent properties of matter, rather than imparted acts and powers, as Neoplatonic principles
should require. Only the affirmation of a temporal origin, which al-Razi unabashedly adopts
from scripture and from the concurring authority of Plato's Timaeus, seems to do justice to the
fact that nature's order is not intrinsic but imparted; and only a temporal creation does justice
to the unimpeded operation of the forces of nature and the self-governing actions of human
intelligence and will. For these gifts were given long ago and are not, as in Neoplatonism,
timelessly imparted without ever really departing from their Source.

But although creation involves a kind of gift, al-Razi cannot treat the act of creation as a sheer
act of grace, as many of his contemporaries might wish to do. His view that in this life evils
outweigh goods, endorsed by Epicurean concerns over the problem of evil, and by physiological
arguments about the ultimate prevalence of pain and suffering over peace and pleasure in all
sensate beings, press him toward the gnostic conclusion that creation is a tragedy or mistake.
Stopping short of such condemnation, al-Razi treats creation as a qualified evil: Life as a whole
and bodily existence in general represent a fall for the life-giving principle, the Soul. But the fall
is broken by the gift of intelligence. The crypt of the gnostic image has a skylight, through
which streams the light of day. There is an avenue of escape. And the Soul's fall,qneither
devised nor forced by God, is ascribed to her spontaneity, not to God's will or wisdom. It was
neither coerced and destined nor mandated by the very nature of intelligence, as though it were
(as in Neoplatonism) a demand of logic, but it was foreseen and tolerated by an all-seeing
wisdom. And the loss it brought about will be overcome.
(L.E. Goodman)


Bibliography:

1.
Works by al-Razi. A.J. Arberry (tr.), The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes, London 1950

W.A. Greenhill (tr.), A treatise on the smallpox and measles, London 1847

P. de Koning (tr.), Traite sur le calcul dans les reins et dans la vessie, Leiden 1896

P. Kraus (ed.), Abi Mohammadi Filii Zachariae Raghensis(Razis) opera philosophica fragmentaque quae
supersunt, Cairo 1939, Pars prior(all that was published), repr. Beirut 1973

M. Meyerhof, Thirty-three clinical observations by Rhazes[from theHawi], in Isis, xxiii (1935),
321-56, see also Aziz Pasha's synopses and discussions of the Hawi, in Bulletin of the Department of
the History of Medicine, Osmania Medical College, Haydarabad, i (1963), 163-87, ii (1964),
23-32, iii (1965), 220-5, etc.

J. Ruska (tr.), Al-Razi's Buch Geheimnis der Geheimnisse, Berlin 1937

M. Vazquez (ed. and tr.), Libro de la introduccion al arte de la medicina, Salamanca 1979.
2.
Studies and sources. M. Azeez Pasha, Biographies of Unani[Greek] physicians found inAl-Hawi of
Rhazes, in Bulletin of the Indian Institute of the History of Medicine, vii (1977), 38-40

Biruni, Risala fi Fihrist kutub M. b. Zakariyya' al-Razi, ed. P. Kraus, Paris 1936, ed. with Persian
tr. M. Mohaghegh, Tehran 1984-5, partial German tr. Ruska in Isis, v (1922), 26-50

M. Fakhry, A tenth-century Arabic interpretation of Plato's Cosmology, in Journal of the History of
Philosophy, vi (1968), 15-22

D. Gutas, Notes and texts from Cairo mss. I. Addenda to P. Kraus' edition of Abu Bakr al-Razi'sTibb
al-Ruhani, in Arabica, xxiv (1977), 91-3

G. Hofmeister, Rasis' Traumlehre, in Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, li (1969), 137-59

Ibn al-qifti, Ta'ri¦h al-Hukama', ed. Lippert, 271-7

Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, 'Uyun al-anba', ed. Müller, i, 309-21

M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Er-Razi philosophe, d'apres des ouvrages recents, in RHR, cxxiv (1941),
142-90

L.E. Goodman, The Epicurean ethic of M. b. Zakariya' ar-Razi, in SI, xxxiv (1971), 5-26

idem, Razi's myth of the fall of the soul: its function in his philosophy, in G. Hourani (ed.), Essays on
Islamic philosophy and science, Albany 1975, 25-40

idem, Razi's psychology, in Philosophical Forum, iv (1972), 26-48

G. Heym, Al-Razi and alchemy, in Ambix, i (1938), 184-91

A.Z. Iskandar, The medical bibliography of al-Razi, in G. Hourani (ed.), op. cit., 41-6

Maimonides, Guide to the perplexed, ed. Munk, iii, 18

M. Mohaghegh, Notes on the'Spiritual Physick' of al-Razi, in SI, xxvi (1967), 5-22

idem, Razi'sKitab al-'Ilm al-Ilahi and the five eternals, in Abr-Nahrain, xiii (1973), 16-23

Nadim, Fihrist, ed. Flügel, 299-302, 358, tr. Bayard Dodge, New York 1970, 82, 377, 435, 599,
701-9

J.R. Partington, The chemistry of Razi, in Ambix, i (1938), 192-6

S. Pines, Razi, critique de Galien, in Actes du Septieme Congres International d'Histoire des Sciences,
Jerusalem 1953

480-7

idem, art. al-Razi, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Abu Hatim al-Razi, A'lam al-nubuwwa, ed. Salah al-Sawy, with an English introd. S.H. Nasr,
Tehran 1977, extracts tr. F. Brion, in Bulletin de Philosophie Medievale, xxviii (1986), 134-62

F. Rosenthal, Ar-Razi on the hidden illness, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, lii (1978), 45-60

Ruska, Al-Razi als Chemiker, in Zeitschrift für Chemie(1922), 719-22

idem, in Isl., xxii (1935), 281-319, xxv (1939), 1-34, 191-3

idem, Al-Biruniqals Quelle für das Leben und die Schriften al-Razi's, in Isis, v (1923), 26-50

H. Said, Razi and treatment through nutritive correction, in Hamdard Islamicus, xix (1976), 113-20

Sezgin, GAS, iii, 274-94, iv, 275-82, v, 282, vi, 187-8, vii, 160, 271-2

O. Timkin, A medieval translation of Rhazes' Clinical observations, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
xii (1942), 102-17.]]