• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
    • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Alpha by Author
    • Dicks and Spooks – Political Spychology
    • Judaism and Jewish Culture and Life
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact
  • X of Interest
    • A-Z Links
    • Alpha – Zulu
      • Associated Articles of Governance – United States of America
      • Daniel L. Everett – Reading Highly Recommended
      • Khamenei and Iran – Assorted Reference
      • Lee Smith’s Comment on ‘Media Warfare’ in the Middle East
      • Lies are Told for Only Two Reasons
      • On Being a War Journalist — Francesca Borri in Syria – 7/1/2013
      • Putin and Russia — Assorted Reference

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: secular

British Secular Muslims reject Mehdi Hasan’s obfuscation of Wahhabi Deobandi terrorism

12 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

political, politics, secular, theocratic

I will add British Secular Muslims to the sidebar here and otherwise note the difficulty involved in redrawing conflict lines along intellectual edges. Nonetheless . . . .

British Secular Muslims

mh

Also cross-posted at LUBP

British Secular Muslims reject apologist and obfuscating stance of British journalist Mehdi Hasan on global terrorism by Wahhabi Deobandi Islamists.

Mehdi Hasan is a presenter of Al Jazeera Television and a political editor of UK version of The Huffington Post. British Secular Muslims are worried that a journalist and opinion maker of his stature

View original post 646 more words

Guest Blog: “Banning the Burqa”

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

history, humanism, Islam, philosophy, politics, rational, religion, scholarship, science, secular, Waseem Altaf

In more than half the Muslim countries women wear skirts.

By Waseem Altaf

In December 2011 Canada banned wearing of “burqa” within its territory.

Earlier on France, Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria did the same.

The Canadian ban was meant to ensure that those taking the oath of Canadian citizenship were actually reciting the oath.

The fact remains that wearing of clothing that completely or almost entirely covers the face is fundamentally at odds with public life.

Is wearing the “burqa” a religious obligation?

Perhaps not!

Women do not wear “burqa” when they perform Hajj.

Does it have to do with culture?

Yes, but which culture?

Is this Culture of tribal areas where women wear shuttle cock “burqas”, or Punjab where we find those black “burqas?”

If the objective is “show of chastity” then for those women who are not allowed to leave their houses, the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks are immodest. To the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks, those wearing the black “burqa” are essentially culpable. To the ones’ wearing black “burqa”, the ones wearing a “chadar” are downright unchaste. To the ones wearing a “chadar”, the ones wearing a “dupatta” are promoters of obscenity.

So on and so forth.

In more than half the Muslim countries women wear skirts. But typical Pakistani women would prefer wearing a “shalwar kameez” worn by Hindu women, than wear a skirt put on by a Muslim Tajik or Turkish or an Iraqi woman. So local cultures determine the dress code and it is not appropriate to set universal standards of so called chastity; as every culture has its nuances and niceties, these have to be respected.

We find female visitors from the West coming to Pakistan and India wearing “shalwar kameez” or jeans while rarely visible in skirts or shorts.

Similarly the Western culture has its own values which should be respected by those who have opted to live there. Those who get remuneration in dollars, francs, pounds and liras; who enjoy full social security benefits in the West; who have sought asylum in there while their lives were not secure in their own countries.

Those who enjoy the Western lifestyle should also have respect for Western values and should try to assimilate them or should abandon the West and come back to Gujaranwala or Kabirwala and put on “burqas” of any color or texture.

From a purely scientific perspective “burqa” is not suitable to wear in hot climates. It obstructs peripheral vision. It also deprives you from the positive effects of nutrients you get from sunlight.

It also seems bizarre when we find pictures of “burqa” clad women on passports and NIC’s.

One should also remember that numerous acts of terrorism in many parts of our country were committed by women wearing “burqas”. Hence “burqa” is also a security threat. It also imprisons you and isolates you from your surroundings and distances you from those around you, creating a trust deficit. It also reminds of medieval constraints where despotic monarchs would hide their concubines from others lest they were exposed to an outsider, endangering their absolute ownership of the “live object”.

As “satti” was banned by the English which did have sacred connotations, banning of “burqa” by Western countries should also be welcomed.

Finally, if you have opted to settle in the West while begging for citizenship, you have no right to contaminate the West with nonsense.

Or if you think it is good to wear a “burqa” put it on in your own country — that is Pakistan or if at all you want to enjoy the civil liberties and social security benefits and human rights and special allowance for the jobless and pizzas and burgers and Western standards of health and education and lavish housing and entertainment and sights of bikini clad babes on the beach then please for God’s sake respect the cultural niceties of those who are providers of all this stuff which you cannot have here in Pakistan or for that matter from the so called heartland of Islam.

————————
Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.

Related Reference

Sherwood, Deborah.  “World Exclusive: Spooks Unmask Burka Death Squads.”  Daily Star, June 12, 2011.

Guest Blog: “Were There Any Great Muslim Scientists?”

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by commart in Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

history, humanism, Islam, philosophy, politics, rational, religion, scholarship, science, secular, Waseem Altaf

By Waseem Altaf

As we remain enamored by our past achievements in the sciences, we forget that there is very little “original” we as Muslims can celebrate and be proud of.

It was during the reign of Abbasid caliphs, particularly Mamun-ur-Rashid (around 813 CE) that in his Dar-ul-Hikmah (the house of wisdom) in Baghdad, the Muslim scholars would begin translating the classic Greek works, primarily toeing the Aristotelian tradition.

In addition, they were heavily relying on Persian and Indian sources.

They also penned huge commentaries on works by Greek philosophers.  However, the Muslim translators were small in number and were primarily driven by curiosity. More than ninety nine percent Arabic translations of works of Greek philosophers were done by either Christian or Jewish scholars.

It is interesting to note that Islamic astronomy, based on Ptolemy’s system was geocentric. Algebra was originally a Greek discipline and ‘Arabic’ numbers were actually Indian.  Most of these works were available to the West during 12th century when the first renaissance was taking place. Although Western scholars did travel to Spain to study Arabic versions of classical Greek thought, they soon found out that better versions of original texts in Greek were also available in the libraries of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium.

However, it would be unfair not to mention some of those great Muslim scholars, though very few in number, who genuinely contributed in the development of philosophy and science.

Al-Razi (865 – 925 CE) from Persia, the greatest of all Muslim physicians, philosophers and alchemists wrote 184 articles and books, dismissed revelation and considered religion a dangerous thing.

Al-Razi was condemned for blasphemy and almost all his books were destroyed later.

Ibn-e-Sina or Avicinna (980-1037CE), another great physician, philosopher and scientist was an Uzbek. Avicenna held philosophy superior to theology. His views were in sharp contrast to central Islamic doctrines and he rejected the resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood. As a consequence of his views, he became main target of Al-Ghazali and was labeled an apostate.
Ibn-e-Rushd (1126-1198 CE) or Averroes from Spain was a philosopher and scientist who expounded the Quran in Aristotelian terms. He was found guilty of heresy, his books burnt, he was interrogated and banished from Lucena.

Al-Bairuni (973-1048 CE), the father of Indology and a versatile genius, was of the strong view that Quran has its own domain and it does not interfere with the realm of science.

Al-Khawarazmi (780-850 CE) was another Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The historian Al-Tabri considered him a Zoroastrian while others thought that he was a Muslim. However nowhere in his works has he acknowledged Islam or linked any of his findings to the holy text.

Omar Kyayyam(1048-1131 CE), one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers and poets was highly critical of religion, particularly Islam. He severely criticized the idea that every event and phenomena was the result of divine intervention.

Al-Farabi(872-950 CE), another great Muslim philosopher, highly inspired by Aristotle, considered reason superior to revelation and advocated for the relegation of prophecy to philosophy.

Abu Musa Jabir- bin- Hayan or Geber (721-815 CE) was an accomplished Muslim alchemist cum pharmacist. Although he was inclined towards mysticism, he fully acknowledged the role of experimentation in scientific endeavors.

Ibn-ul-haitham or Hazen (965-1040 CE) was an outstanding physicist, mathematician, astronomer and an expert on optics. He was ordered by Fatimid King Al-Hakim to regulate the floods of the Nile, which he knew was not scientifically possible. He feigned madness and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

As we go through the life history of these great men we find that they were influenced by Greek, Babylonian or Indian contributions to philosophy and science, had a critical and reasoning mind and were ‘not good’ Muslims or even atheists. A significant number of them were reluctant to even reveal the status of their beliefs for fear of reprisal from the fanatics.

They never ascribed their achievements to Islam or divinity.

And they were scholars and scientists because of a critical mind which would think and derive inspiration from observation and not scriptures which set restrictions on free thinking and unhindered pursuit of knowledge.

Hence bringing in Islam to highlight achievements of Muslim scientists is nothing but sheer rhetoric as these men did not derive their achievements out of Islam or flourished due to Islam.

And we find that whatever little contribution to science was made can be owed to ‘imperfect Muslims’.  In fact, It was the ‘perfect Muslim’, the Islamist, from the 12th century who was to give the biggest blow to scientific thought in the Muslim world: Imam Ghazali (1058-1111 CE) who still occupies a center stage among Muslim philosophers openly denounced the laws of nature and scientific reasoning.

Ghazali argued that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. He would assert that a piece of cotton burns when put to fire, not because of physical reasons but because God wants it to burn. Ghazali was also a strong supporter of the Ash’arites; philosophers who would uphold the precedence of divine intervention over physical phenomena and bitterly opposed the Mu’tazillites; the rationalists who were the true upholders of scientific thought.  In other words Ghazali championed the cause of orthodoxy and dogmatism at the cost of rationality and scientific reasoning.

Today we find that all four major schools of ‘Sunni’ Islam reject the concept of ‘Ijtehad’ which can loosely be translated as ‘freedom of thought’. Hence there is absolutely no room for any innovation or modification in traditional thought patterns.

We also find that as Europe was making use of technology while transforming into a culture of machines, the acceptance of these machines was extremely slow in the Islamic world. One prime example is that of the printing press which reached Muslim lands in 1492; however printing was banned by Islamic authorities because they believed the Koran would be dishonored by appearing out of a machine. As a result, Arabs did not acquire printing press until the 18th century.

It also stands established that science is born out of secularism and democracy and not religious dogmatism. And science only flourished in places where religion had no role to play in matters of state. Hence there is an inverse relationship between religious orthodoxy and progress in science.

Rational thought in the Muslim world developed during the reign of liberal Muslim rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who patronized the Mu’tazillites or rational thinkers.  After the religious zealots’ compilation of the Ahadis and the rise of scholars like Al-Ghazali that all scientific reasoning came to an end in the 13th century.  As a consequence the Muslims contributed almost nothing to scientific progress and human civilization since the dawn of the 13th century. And while science and technology flourish in the modern world, a vast majority of Muslims, engulfed by obscurantism, still find solace in fantasies of a bygone era——the so called ‘golden age’ of Islam.

————————
Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.

FNS – “Not By Religion Alone” — Pakistan, Reference Ghazi Salahuddin

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Pakistan, religion, secular, secularism

Secularism is deemed to be a dirty word in Pakistan. But it is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it may already be too late. We now stand effectively disconnected from the freedom movement that was led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his associates.

Article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-138736-Not-by-religion-alone

  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • Ukraine: Russia’s Invasion Force and Western Posture
  • Ukraine: Putin Is In Control
  • Ukraine: Putin’s Control x Threat
  • Ukraine v Russia: Broken Ceasefires –> Massed Army: Midnight is Coming
  • Ukraine, Russia, and NATO’s Prevarication
  • Ukraine: ‘Bidenlain v Putler” — Russia Adds Heat to Its ‘Frozen Conflict’ with Ukraine

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.