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Archive for the ‘Random musings’ Category
A few notes on the 10th of Muharram
God’s wisdom is beyond comprehension.
The 10th of Muharram is simultaneously the most celebrated day in the Islamic Calendar, and simultaneously the most sorrowful day of the Islamic Calendar.
It celebrates the day that God saved the Prophet Moses -p- and his people from the clutches of the Pharaoh.
It mourns the day that God allowed the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad -p- and his people to be slaughtered by the clutches of Yazid.
Travels and tears - Adieu Benazir Bhutto
This blogger has been travelling since the last two weeks: visiting the various Sufi shrines in India and meeting up old and new friends. And, after years of silence, my inner music found a voice. But the gods had other plans.
Since the 27th of that wretched December, everything has been overshadowed by the ghastly murder of Pakistan’s best known and perhaps the only national leader. Read the rest of this entry »
Einstein on Religion and Science
Came across this brilliant quote from Einstein:
“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.†Read the rest of this entry »
Islam forbids terrorism
Excerpts from here:
•  Sentence of death is allowed only through the process of justice, but even then, forgiveness is better. “Nor take life – which Allah has made sacred – except for just cause…†(17:33). Read the rest of this entry »
Taslima Nasrin - the “outcast”..
Taslima Nasrin is now a “sensation” of another kind in India. She has attracted the attention of those segments of Indian media that love to sell anything that brings Islam and Muslims related controversies into the public domain. Read the rest of this entry »
On stereotyping
I posted an article on female stereotyping at All Things Pakistan blog. There was a bit of discussion but I was also chided as being partial, class-ist and insensitive to men.
Here was this humble blogger, on the defensive: Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook: Marketers Are Your ‘Friends’
Facebook cannot be all that benign. There is a privacy issue - I am not an expert and would like to know if the scary stories about Facebook are true? Read the rest of this entry »
Fahmida Riaz on the Wall
My young friend has translated Fahmida Riaz’s words, and how inspiring these are.. Read the rest of this entry »
Not again -
Sometime back I had written a piece on the Kafkaesque nature of our history. The recent events though not altogether unexpected nor peculiar reminded of how the bizarre is almost normal. Read the rest of this entry »
How rarely these few years (Seth)
The devastating midnight attack
140 dead and 538 injured - this little byline cuts through hearts and our future!
Yesterday was the day of images - moving pictures of excitement, energy, applause and then the saddest of recent tragedies. Read the rest of this entry »
“Behind the Clichés, a Modern Pakistan”
I was sent the captioned article by a friend. Thankfully, not a pessimistic perspective on contemporary Pakistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Ramzan - some home-truths
Today, ATP published this post of mine that attempts to look at some of the uncomfortable aspects of the way Holy month is practised by the believers. I have to state here that SA’s blog inspired me to write this, even though I am not half as qualified to comment on such issues.
“O you who believe, fasting is decreed for you, as it was decreed for those before you, that you may attain salvation.â€Al Quran- [2:183]
“….in all fairness we need to be a little truthful particularly in the month when we need to take a closer look at our conduct. Each year, Ramzan generates much of the usual piety and loud proclamations about how the Satan is chained in this month and the doors of repentance are let open upon the believers. We have grown up internalizing these views and therefore a majority of Muslim population across the globe fasts and prays for Divine mercy.
Essentially this month is a time of cleansing one’s soul as well as the body. However, every Ramzan witnesses some distasteful activities by the believers that come hand in hand with the rituals of the holy month.
First, the consumerism: forget about the cleansing of the system – there is an overemphasis on food when it should be the last item on our priorities. There are Iftaars galore and rich fatty foods are added to the diet like never before. A lavish Iftaar (across the board) is followed by a sumptuous dinner. There are Iftar packages everywhere from small stalls to five star hotels. And, the whole purpose of the exercise is somewhat undermined by the food-fest[s] indulged in by all and sundry.
A few words on the despicable behaviour of the profiteers and hoarders nowadays defined as the ultimate magic bullet – the market. This year the prices of basic staple diet – atta reached the skies when a sack of wheat flour was sold at Rs 320-340 much higher than the “fixed†prices. Not content with this, there was an average increase of 10-11 per cent in all the food items. Now if this is the official statistic, then the actual figure is bound to be higher. I have no estimate but judging by stories in the media it was much much higher.
Imagine the poor of Pakistan who constitute 24-34 per cent of the total figure (depends on the measure and source one adopts). They have had a tough time this Ramzan. And, then all this piety and repentance? The Federal Bureau of Statistics has reported an increase of 12.61% increase was seen in the “ratio of dearness for the low income group†during this time in comparison to the last year.
I can even imagine that those benefiting from the hikes would give massive amounts of charity, offer all the prayers (perhaps more through the nawaafil) and think that they would wash away their crimes and misdemeanours. Indeed the ultimate arbiter and decision maker of their deeds is the Almighty but one cannot help notice the irony of this situation.
The spirit of Ramzan also stresses the redistributive aspect of Islamic practices. The giving of Zakat at the end of the month is also mandatory for Muslims. In the past a hash was made of the Zakat system put into place by the Zia regime where all these funds were diverted and used for political and ‘strategic’ gains. This trend has been somehwhat arrested but pilferage continues. And, I will not say more on the new status symbol of the elites – an Umra towards the end of the holy month – where hundreds and thousands of rupees are spent while a majority of poor put up the posters of Kaaba on their cracking walls.
Road rage is also another trend during the month and many a people think that fasting has to do with starvation – our speech and thoughts need to fast as well. Do they? Rumi rightly said:
Wash your hands and your mouth, neither eat nor speak; seek that speech and that morsel which has come to the silent ones.
There is much too much emphasis on the ritual and the spirit of our great religion is the real casualty of the way we practice religion in the land of the pure. About time someone explained the words Taqwa and Tazkia-e Nafs in their entirety. I end with these words.
There is more to be said here but may God forgive me for this rant. Perhaps I am also a victim of that impatience that I am supposed to contain.
Why I’ve learned to love the novel…
Thanks to Isa Daudpota, I was introduced to Rebecca Goldstein who marries the art of novel with science in an effortless manner. Her remarks in this piece published at the New Scientist are insightful:Â
More than ever,science is pushing at us
from every side-not just physics but the
behavioural sciences, genetics and
neuroscience-forcing us to revise what it
means for us to be in the universe. It’s the job of the novelistnot only to engage with that challenge but, more pressingly, to present what it feels like to be so engaged.The novel’s wondrous capaciousness allows it to take on
all of these dimensions in the quest towards knowing the world.And science and art are not quite as far
removed as the so-called” two cultures” often presume. We’re not lunging our fists straight into reality in pursuing the sciences, but rather modelling reality.This modelling is an imaginative work. I’ve always taken pleasure in Einstein’s remark that if he were exceptional in anything it was as a fabulist. As fabulists, both artists and scientists not call on their imaginations but also on aesthetic criteria of beauty and elegance to guide them in their work.
This explains the range, appeal and relevance of the novel.
Full text of this piece can be accessed here
So it took Mr Greenspan years to admit this
Alan Greenspan — the former chief of the US central bank, for years an inscrutable seer on the economy — has outraged the Bush administration by alleging in his new memoir that “the Iraq war is largely about oil.â€
Read the full text here
It is just too late, Mr Greenspan. After a million people dead, remnants of an ancient civilization and culture wiped out, the sectarian monster unleashed and the world fractured, this little home-truth might be a sensation for the doctored media.
Most of knew the underlying motive for this criminal war..
(having said that - better late than never)
Update: A good editorial from the Daily Times:
When the Administration reacted angrily, Mr Greenspan himself found it “politically inconvenient†to stick to his clear pronouncement, but his “verdict†has gone and mixed with the vortex of opinion complaining about the Bush Administration’s “oil barons†falling on Iraq for its oil. To count just the people at the top, President George W Bush himself, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have close links to the American oil industry, also called the Big Oil.
For I do not recognise myself
ATP recently published a piece of mine on Rumi and Bulleh Shah. I have quoted a translation of Rumi’s verse (rendered by Reynold A. Nicholson)  in that post. I am reproducing the lines here -
What is to be done, O Moslems? For I do not recognise myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.
I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;
I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heaven.
I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire;
I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.
I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria, nor of Saqsin
I am not of the kingdom of Iraqian, nor of the country of Khorasan
I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise, nor of Hell
I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwan.
Vandalism in the name of development
I was introduced to this photo taken by Khanpride by Jami Sirhandi.
His plea was to stand up to the ‘development mafia’ and stop this vandalism.
Across Pakistan, rampant and unplanned urbanisation is taking its toll on green spaces and the trees. As it is our forest cover has denuded to alarming proportions; and now we are creating urban wastelands of dubious impact in the name of development.
The image on the right, again shows how trees have vanished and there has been no re-plantation despite the usual lip-service that is paid on these occasions.
Saving trees is not just a romantic notion: it is vital to our future and involves the right of our next generations to survive on this planet.
Stand up and be counted, as they say…
The Angel Rose - a poem by Fatima Hasan
The past crept into my mind today
A new day, a different recall
Of days gone by so hurriedly
I grasped the rose ever so quietly
Like leaves falling from a tree
Now the rose is no more
It invades my ever-arousing thoughts
The current of air blows by
I hear the breeze tenderly hissing
Transferring their way through the petals
Fluttering to pat the passion
I know! It’s my angel rose.
More by Fatima Hasan here
Long live Malaysia
Malaysia has entered the fifty first year of its existence. This has been a half-century of determination, progress and keeping a fine balance between the diverse communities, races and cultures in the country. But Malaysia achieved successes against all odds.
True that it confronts issues of ethnic and religious tension and the side effects of controlled politics. However, prosperity assures that most of the citizens find a stake in national unity and the country’s future!
I am a little allergic to the magnified tales of tensions in the country especially by a media that we know is neither fair nor benign. Which country of the world is free of internal schisms and struggles? Fifty years is too early to assess that. Or is it the case that this rapid success without reliance on the Western prescriptions and defying the post-colonial clientelism is at play. Inverse racism of sorts. Hope I am wrong…
Or is it that there is a Muslim majority which by definition (in the global propaganda) raises alarm bells? Maybe the images of women with scarves participating in the economic and political life of the country upsets all the stereotypes about women’s “subjugation” by Islam. Many things irk the masters of stereotyping and branding agents of a new imperialism.
It is also a country that welcomes its tourists and makes sure that they enjoy their stay, Islamism notwithstanding. It also challenges the highlights of a recently independent ‘developing’ country: poverty, low levels of education, crumbling infrastructure, crime and dependence?
Unfortunately it is true that tensions in the society and calls for an “Islamic” society dilute its attempts to maintain ethnic harmony and channelise national resources to sustain gains already made. But like many Malaysians, I share the optimism and wish the country and its people the best.
Happy Independence Day - I love Malaysia (truly Asia!).
Postscript: My optimism on Malaysia in an older piece.
Anyone listening?
Thanks to my friend Temporal, I had a chance to read this account of contemporary Pakistan - The diary of a border crosser - authored by Rehan Ansari published by DNA. This piece highlights the recent developments in Pakistan and the major shifts underway.
My stints in Pakistan should have made me a believer in the coming revolution, instead I developed a knee jerk teary-eyedness when listening to revolutionary Faiz.
Admittedly, the article is woolly and rambles, but it does present an upbeat picture of contemporary Pakistan. It ends with advice to the Indians to change their visa policy and help the ones struggling for democracy in Pakistan.
Welcome, you and your pals come and go as you like,’Â should be India’s birthday gift to these Pakistanis. Happy Birthday, we acknowledge that you have arrived.
Great advice but here is what I had to say on the article that:
..competently presented the changing contours of Pakistani society and its inherent dynamism - a free media and rising middle class are accelerating the emergence of a “new” Pakistan.
Hope someone is paying attention to this in India, not least the media that still has to shed its acquiescence to the bureaucratized worldview of the Indian establishment, and global constructs of Jihad, burqas and terror sold as journalism.