Bringing Islam to knees in India my dream: Thackeray

[Zyxius]

Dude, hate mongering are we?

Hardly. More of a cliche joke.

 

[Majnun]

Dude, hate mongering are we?

Isn't Thackeray?

 

[vish]

Isn't Thackeray?

Ofcourse he is... what else is he expected to do... he's a scum bag and a politician and is loosing ground... you intend to follow his footsteps?

By the way, even a cliche joke might open the pandora's box.

 

[nitesh]

Isn't Thackeray?

I agree with what vish says, there is no point listening to such jokers.

 

[Zyxius]

Ofcourse he is... what else is he expected to do... he's a scum bag and a politician and is loosing ground... you intend to follow his footsteps?

By the way, even a cliche joke might open the pandora's box.

There....I've amended my post to mind your sensibilities since you do seem to be a reasonable fellow. What I've left.....I think you should be able to laugh at that as a comment on their (BJP's) crazed fanaticism. No?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Do you think it is fair to make this comment about EVERYONE who believes that Khilafa holds the answer?

No - and in hindsight that comment did seem to generalize, which was not my intention.

I was referring to the extremists in our society - not just those that use violence, but those that intellectually advocate stifling fee thought, creativity, the arts, culture etc.

There are others who look at Islam's golden age, when all of the above flourished, and argue for a Khilafat because they see it as a viable political system that can address the failures of our current system.

Criticizing them was not my intention. Though I still maintain that we as Pakistanis need to work with what we have, and use it to improve our lot (and the system), even if we do not agree with the system in place, rather than merely waiting for "Khilafat" to come around.

 

[muse]

Islam as a system?? of what? A COMPLETE WAY OF LIFE?? -- can't really get behind such ideas - strike me as totalitarian - A Khalifah?? Whose function is what?? If the Khalifah is a benign religious authority without coersive powers, sure - but no coersive authority to any religious authority, experience shows that's not the way to go. Anyway, isn't Islam about FAITH, and isn't it the answer to a hunger of the human soul for FAITH that unites the creature with The Creator in a union whose path and destination is love??

Who needs a islam that pretends to be a system of governance, of economics, of everything but FAITH in God.

 

[Zyxius]

Muse,

From all your articles it did not strike me that you would take such a stand against Islam being a complete way of life. I am sure you do realize how much of a fraud democracy, secularism and free-market capitalism are so I dont know how you can instantly claim what you have about Islam, i.e. totalitarianism. Fact of the matter is that just as the US & Canada are based on Judaio-Christian laws, as is Europe, our world must be based on Islamic laws and the Islamic way of life. Tell me something....do you believe that there is such a thing as an absolute truth? Or is morality and truth relative?

The Islamic system of economics would have prevented fiat money from being permitted. It would have prevented fractional reserve banking. It would have prevented derivatives that are driving the prices of oil, food, and everything else up to kill of whats left of the poor. It would not allow large multinationals to monopolize food by patenting seeds that are now referred to as "terminator seeds"that keep farmers reliant on corporation produced seeds and inputs. It would have preventing usury based economics. Do you not realize how enlightened these views are considering how screwed our global financial system is today, and how wide the gap between the rich and poor is? There is so much injustice and corruption in the current system, I dont know how you can so confidently dismiss our Islamic way of life just out of hand like that.

 

[vish]

how much of a fraud democracy, secularism and free-market capitalism are

History says otherwise...

 

[muse]

Xy


I take exception to your suggestion that Salafism or any other ism within Islam speaks for all Islam - I really think we should be more careful with such assertions. My understanding of Islam and doctrines and dogma is that it is a a long process of open and informed and HONEST debate with a multiplicity epistemologies, such that the more persuasive is ascendant in informed opinion.

Yes you are exactly right that the financial system and certain aspects of globalization in a market economy not regulated by ethics are most troubling, but lets not imagine that so called Islamic economics is virtue itself.

See, gentle friend, we would do well to be humble and honest - today if islam is on her knees, it is Muslims who have led it there, the same Muslims who gave up on education, who cannot reason, who no longer have the courage of reason and the virtue of love of God, born of FAITH in God.

Gentle friend, "Faith" means a belief in "in the absence of confirming instances" and of course, religious FAITH for the Muslim must include other aspects and conditions. Faith arises from citadel of doubt to the citadel of certainty of God's salvation - is this not so?? When we speak of other aspects and conditions to exist for a fuller understanding of faith, we must recognize, must we not, that coersion has no, zero, role in pathway of faith and that faith is best understaood as love is understod, in the sense that elements of love are representative of faith.

Love too is born of doubt, love too is a condition of vulnerableness, and just as love is a regarded by our reason as positive value, so our reason regards faith as a positive value - we because we are Muslim, have conviction in the existence of shaitan, satan, yet do we have "faith" in shaitan?

So, there is a goodness that we understand by our reason that we see in God (root word for good) - when we forget that we as Muslims are called to struggle for faith in God, for our connection to love, as only we humans can understand it - and when we turn the essence of Islam in to a ideology of politics, and ideology of economics an ideology of everything - in my opinon, to my understanding, we demean and denigrate Islam.

Islam a complete way of life?? What's complete? After all when did life, our knowledge and our understanding stop changing, stop evolving that we can use the term "complete" in a meaningful manner -- please do not misunderstand, the statement is not to suggest that for Muslims, religion is not complete. After all if there really are as many paths to God as there are persons, what will any thoughful person make of such statemensts as "complete" -- this where my position that coersive authority vested in religious authority is not my bag, not my understanding of Islam. That this is not my understanding is itself confirmation that there are a mutilplicity of paths within Islam and outside it.

Again, I assure you that I do not dismiss what you suggest is an islamic way of life, quite the contrary, I am a proponent of a conscious, honest, open approach, to understanding the challenge of living as a Muslim. What I am dismissing is the suggestion as you assert that there is but one understanding of "Islamic way of life" and that to disagree with your point of view is to disagree and diss Islam itself -- that we have different, divergent views on the same subject suggest that there cannot be a single view of "Islamic way of life" unless of course it is a point of view whose ascendancy is reliant on coersion - and honestly, can that ever be Islamic? It is after all a Dawa to come through the doors that will always be open to those seeking to walk through them is it not? or is it by coersion?

 

[Zyxius]

Xy


I take exception to your suggestion that Salafism or any other ism within Islam speaks for all Islam - I really think we should be more careful with such assertions.

I never made that assertion so I'm not sure where you got that from. I however consider myself to be a Salafi, so what I say comes from this point of view.

Yes you are exactly right that the financial system and certain aspects of globalization in a market economy not regulated by ethics are most troubling, but lets not imagine that so called Islamic economics is virtue itself.

The point I was making was that it was because of our acceptance in the absolute truth's contained in Islam that we (muslims) accept that our model does not allow for fractional reserve banking, fiat money, and other elements of the paradigm currently in place. We do not get to argue that banks play a role in creating liquidity so therefore they must be allowed to create money through the fractional reserve banking system because regardless of the contemporary economists at every institution being convinced of the righteousness of this concession to large corporation, the fact that it violates an ABSOLUTE truth contained in our Islam, our way of life, prevents it from being accepted in the Islamic economic model. Nobody is saying anything about virtue here since that word has many connotations, but we are talking about a system that is far superior to the current system because it rests on certain absolute truths which can never be violated as a principle. It is not so easy to get away with this free-for-all economics in which there is no such thing as an absolute truth. George Soros can speculate on food and drive the prices of wheat up and kill off 500,000 people in the developing world because the system does not take the position that no amount of liquidity in the market of freemarketeerism can outweigh the right of the individual to food without having to compete with out of control finance. The same applies to law, government and every other facet of our lives. The absence of absolute truths, or a morality, allows the powerful to get away with murder and claim that it is an unavoidable part of the system.

See, gentle friend, we would do well to be humble and honest - today if islam is on her knees, it is Muslims who have led it there, the same Muslims who gave up on education, who cannot reason, who no longer have the courage of reason and the virtue of love of God, born of FAITH in God.

Islam cannot ever be on its knees, just as mathematics or physics can never be on its knees. It will remain the truth as it is, but Muslims will fall to their knees if they do not adhere to what they proclaim to believe in and develop upon that all their education, sciences and the civilization. You see, the British ruled the subcontinent and they actually brought better roads, infrastructure, education, governance, and even some laws but we still wanted them out. Why? Was it because we wanted to emulate them in every respect? Or was it because we wanted to run our affairs our way and have our own representatives manage our affairs? I think it was the latter. And the objective was that our governance must relfect us and our values and our identity. That is that we are by and large Muslims. This is the same issue we had with India and why we parted ways....because we could not live as Muslims and practice our way of life as Muslims. Indians slaughtered us not because we looked different, but because we were Muslims and our way of life and ideology differed. this is what this thread is also about and Bal Thackeray hates us for that same reason and that is why there is a Pakistan today...for this reason. My own direct family saw dozens slaughtered at the hands of hindu fanatics in the 1940s and we fled from there because we were being persecuted as MUSLIMS only because we were Muslim. Shall we abandon that identity now after all that suffering, tears and blood??



I will discuss the other points raised by you in a separate thread where this discussion would be more to the subject, but did want to respond as far as was relevant here.

 

[muse]

XY

What are these "values" you speak of? I think this a very important point and perhaps something we can build a consensus on.

You say :"the objective was that our governance must relfect us and our values and our identity"

What are these values and what is the content of this identity? and is this identity in stasis?

 

[Zyxius]

XY

What are these "values" you speak of? I think this a very important point and perhaps something we can build a consensus on.

You say :"the objective was that our governance must relfect us and our values and our identity"

What are these values and what is the content of this identity? and is this identity in stasis?

I've started another thread where this would be more relevant. Its called the failings of capitalism, secularism and democracy

 

[Majnun]

Let's not argue about whether or not Islam can provide us with a complete way of life. I myself support Ataturk, Jinnah, Ayub Khan and Mushrraf's views of secularism, but there's no need to bring that up. We don't have to argue about whether Islam is better for governance or secularism.