Fanatical Hindu groups on a force conversion mission

I’m reading this news from India

Indian opposition MPs have protested in parliament against Hindu nationalist groups for converting religious minorities to Hinduism. In recent weeks, a number of religious ceremonies have been organised in different parts of India by Hindu hardline groups, close to Mr Modi's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and there have been allegations that they involved force, fraud or inducement

Generally it’s very rare to have the whole family converting to a new faith. One or two person from a family I can understand but not when this sort of large-scale family conversion…

Earlier this month, more than 50 Muslim families were reportedly converted to Hinduism against their will in the town of Agra. At the weekend, it was reported that about 100 Christians had converted to Hinduism in the western state of Gujarat while 30 Christians were converted in the southern state of Kerala.

So, who’s behind this?

Hardline Hindu groups like the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Bajrang Dal, VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and others say that Indian Muslims and Christians were all Hindus who have converted to other faiths over the last few centuries. These groups regularly hold ceremonies which they call "ghar vapasi" - or returning home - to allow Christians and Muslims to return to their "original religion". At the weekend, the head of India's most powerful Hindu group, the RSS, vowed to continue with the conversions.

"We will bring back those who have lost their way. They did not go on their own... They were lured into leaving," he said.
Recently, a row broke out after government minister Niranjan Jyoti used an abusive term to refer to non-Hindus, by asking people at a public rally to choose between Ramzada (children of the Hindu God Ram) and Haramzada (bastards). Mr Modi said he disapproved of her language but refused to sack her.

India is turning into a scary place for religious minorities. And here we all thought only Islam has fanatical followers…..

Reference
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30573796

Is mental disorder one of the leading causes of Islamic based terrorism?

Most of us have met folks who seemed somewhat strange and we think they are suffering from a psychological problem. But because we are not trained professionally in mental health science, we can at best guess or state inclusively when something isn’t right without the ability to go into specifics.

Yesterday, the Muslim man who attacked the civilians in France is believed to have a long history of mental illness.

On Sunday a driver screaming "God is great" in Arabic ran down pedestrians in Dijon, injuring 11, two seriously. The man who carried out Sunday's attack was arrested after targeting pedestrians in five different parts of the city in the space of half an hour. He is said to be "apparently imbalanced" and to have spent time in a psychiatric hospital. The driver has been known to police for minor incidents dating back 20 years, he added. The prosecutor in Dijon said the attacker had a long history of mental illness and the incident was not linked to terrorism.

The perpetrator of the Sydney attack last week was also someone who was certifiably insane according to the news sources: Australia cafe attacker: Terrorist or just a lunatic?

In the days since the deadly attack, debate has swirled across Australia about whether to term it an act of religious-inspired political terrorism or an aberrant action by a lunatic with a giant thirst for attention.

The other interesting point-of-view presented in the article is on how do you classify this sort of attacks against random civilians; A lone-wolf type of attack or part of a larger coordinated attack that falls under Islamic terrorism?

Security analyst Neil Fergus said in the Sydney Morning Herald that classifying the attack as terrorism "would only be feeding the propaganda machine" of Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Fairfax Media's Clementine Ford wrote that linking the attack to terrorism was racist.

But others call such attitudes "denialism" in an age when Islamist extremist groups are calling for lone-wolf attacks against "infidels" from Australia to America. "Terrorism is violence perpetrated for political purposes, and despite any personal, legal or mental problems Monis might have faced, he clearly intended this incident to be an act of terrorist theater," said security analyst Scott Stewart of Stratfor, a Texas-based security analysis group. "Just because Monis was more of a bumbling Kramer than a deadly Carlos the Jackal does not mean he was not a grass-roots terrorist operative. Indeed … most grass-roots operatives tend to be more like stray mutts than lone wolves."

In the future, I think it would also be interesting to look deeply into the life of the leaders of terror groups who could as well be as crazy as some of their followers.

References
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30580082
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-australia-terrorism-20141222-story.html

Major causes of death in 20th century

I’m very fascinated with this image representation of the major causes of death in 20th century

Did you know that more people had die because of diseases than anything else in the last century?

Here’s a brief overview of the death

1.97 billion due to Non-communicable diseases (the biggest cause of death here are all the cardiovascular diseases about 1.25 billion)

1.68 billion due to Infectious diseases (diarrhea: 226 million, smallpox: 400 million, respiratory: 485 million, malaria: 194 million)

530 million due to Cancer (Lung: 93 million, Stomach: 64 million, Liver: 46 million)

278 million due to Health complications (Perinatal conditions: 155 million, Maternal Conditions: 64 million, Nutritional Deficiencies: 59 million)

980 million due to humanity (Murder: 177 million, ideology: 142 million, Air pollution: 116 million, Drugs: 115 million)

Reference
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/20th-century-death/

Pakistan’s support for terrorism proven to be unwise

A few days ago, over a hundred school kids were massacre by gunmen from Taliban, the terror organization. Taliban claimed responsibility for the school attack as a revenge for the various deadly operations carried out against them by the Pakistan authority. Yesterday, Pakistani military carried out another ‘revenge’ attack against the Taliban.

Pakistani warplanes and ground forces killed at least 77 militants in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said Friday, days after Taliban fighters killed 148 people - most of them children - in a school massacre.

Pakistan has a long history of supporting domestic terrorists and terror organization working across its borders. When the Taliban hijacked Afghanistan to form an Islamic state between 1996-2001 and carried out ethnic-cleansing of its minority (the Hazara and others), Pakistan was among the three countries that choose to recognize them despite strong worldwide condemnation

Pakistan’s addiction to jihad eventually destroyed its own security. The policy was first used in the 1980s, when Pakistan, then with full U.S. backing, supported Islamist warriors against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. After the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan turned the jihadists on long-term enemy India in the 1990s, especially in the disputed region of Kashmir. By the mid-1990s, Pakistan promoted the emergence of a new Islamist movement in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

When everyone in the world was searching for bin Laden, the leader of a terrorist organization, guess where he found a safe haven? Pakistan.

Pakistan has also conveniently ignored act of terrors that are committed across the Indian borders

Lakhvi’s release on $5,000 bail triggered swift condemnations from India and raised questions about Pakistan’s pledges to crack down on militants following the siege of an army-run school earlier this week that killed 132 children and 16 staff members.
Lakhvi, the operations commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, is one of seven Pakistani nationals facing trial for the attacks in India’s commercial capital that killed 166 people in November 2008.

Since the Pakistani authority could act fast when they choose to (like today), I sometimes wonder why they never act against domestic terrorism (violent acts) carried out within the country by shadowy groups such as the various attacks against the Shias, Christians and also the Sunnis and political assassinations.

According to this news report Pakistan seems to be moving away from supporting the Jihadist groups.

In the wake of the Peshawar school massacre, some U.S. and Afghan officials are beginning to express optimism that Pakistan may finally be changing its decadeslong policy of supporting jihadist groups. Pakistan’s military for several months has been moving away from the policy, under which these militant groups have long been used by the country’s spy agencies and security establishment against India and Afghanistan.

It isn’t clear, however, to what extent the military, which runs security policy independent of the civilian government, will adhere to the new zero-tolerance approach to jihadists.

In recent months, it seemed to apply only to many of the groups based on the western border with Afghanistan, including the Pakistani Taliban. The country hasn’t seen a move against militant outfits focused on India to the east, or some of the groups that target Pakistan’s own Shiite minority.

But many doubt that Pakistan would end its support for terrorism as long as they are not targeted

“There is no change,” said Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University. “Pakistan defines its threat as coming from those militants who cannot be persuaded to kill in Afghanistan or India.”

References
http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-accused-plotter-of-mumbai-attacks-ordered-back-to-jail-20141219-story.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pakistan-kills-dozens-of-militants-after-school-massacre/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistan-moves-to-end-policy-on-good-taliban-1419013453

Would religion exist if God didn’t?

We believe that God exist, hence there is at least one religion.

We also know that if God didn’t exist, then we could have easily invented HIM/HER…because that’s what we are good at..creating gods/goddess and other supernatural beings and magical stories about them.

I know at least one philosopher who theorized that in the beginning of time, mankind started (began) without any religion whatsoever (the state of being in a complete disbelief).

Others strongly believe that the whole concept of religion was created because of the necessity to preserve the structure in the community and also for the convenience of the society.

Yet, many more believe that religions were created to not only explain the world around us but also the one beyond us (outer space, after death etc).

Realistically, no one can stop/could have stopped anyone from inventing their own religion/faith (this was far more easier in the olden days when we had no Internet …no one possess that many books, had libraries or could go on Internet forums to discuss or cross-check facts or share images/pictures!).

In one of my other posts here, I already stated that I no longer subscribe to this idea that there’s one true religion and that the rest of religions originated from that one true faith but that the message of that true religion could have somehow got lost/perverted by the followers of that religion.


We say God created the religion and hence religion is a validation of God’s existence.

This is not a well thought out argument because everything is very abstract and unverifiable. We already assumed that God exist because of the necessity to create a religion and we also assume that this God is interested in guiding us when we can find plenty of evidence around us to show that God doesn’t actually guide people that much. In fact, more people are misguided than guided.

Age of conversion/changing your religion should be raised to 21

Undoubtedly, Islamic teaching has proven to be very attractive for the uninitiated (newbies/recent converts to Islam/born again Muslim). On the surface level, Islam is very appealing on history, rationality, practicality/implementation, universal value systems and the metaphysics is also not too crazy.

But that’s just the surface. Going into a deeper analysis of the faith, you’ll find many instances where Islam can also be proven to be theologically flawed just like any other religion. But no one (not many) goes deeper into that level where you start to critically examine the dogma. And perhaps that’s a major contributing factor of why you see so much of chaos, cruelty, corruption, low standard of living and ignorance among the Muslims.

I’m reading this heartbreaking story about a 17-year old German boy who converted to Islam without the knowledge of his family. He participates in the worthless war in Syria.

He’s dead now at the age of 19.

Karg says two young men with an "immigrant background" knocked on Alfons' mother's door to tell her of his death in Syria last summer. "When she opened up, they said: 'Congratulations, your son is now in paradise,' " he says. Karg adds they showed her a photograph of his bullet-ridden body and his goodbye letter, neither of which they let her keep for fear the police would use the items to track the young men down.

Most of these stories start with a secret conversion of a very young teen. He/she has to hide his religion because of the family dynamics that doesn’t allow the convert to be very open/frank with the parents.

He says Alfons grew more withdrawn after he secretly converted to Islam at age 17. The father says the lanky, insecure teen didn't grow a beard but cropped his blond hair short, stopped shaking hands with girls and women, and abandoned his apprenticeship. Karg says he found out about the conversion from his younger son, Leonard, who has a different mother. The boy caught his half-brother praying during a weekend visit. Leonard told Karg that Alfons' reaction was: "Don't tell Papa," just as he always hid things from his father.

The young convert who’s very idealistic and high for his new religion secretly visited places where he could be heavily indoctrinated (brainwashed). At this point, there’s no longer moderation or voice of reason or even adult supervision.

After that, when Alfons turned 18, he emptied his savings account and took a trip with two Turkish friends to Turkey. But before last Christmas, unbeknownst to his father, Alfon left for Turkey again. Karg says he heard through acquaintances that his eldest had called his mother and told her to give away his belongings."That was for me a crucial alarm bell," Karg says. "A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?"

In the past, I’ve been posting many blog posts questioning the wisdom of western countries that were conveniently turning blind eyes when their citizens travelled to fight in the Syrian war because of their mutual hatred of Assad regime. I’m seeing that both sides in this war as equally evil and no one should support one or the other.

These sorts of ‘incidents’ are happening rampantly in western countries. Even though it’s too late to do anything for Alfons, perhaps there’s still a chance to save many other youths just like him whose attraction to Islam are making them so vulnerable that at the end they become prey to those who wished to exploit them.

Preventing young Germans from heading to Syria or Iraq — whether they are the fewer than 10 percent who are converts like Alfons, or the rest who come from an immigrant background — is something German authorities say is a top priority. In nearby North Rhine Westphalia, the head of the state's domestic intelligence, Burkhard Freier, says his government has launched three pilot programs called "Signpost" to reach out to at-risk youth.

Sadly, the more I read testimonials of young recent converts to Islam who are dragged into this unnecessary war, the more I asked myself of why there’s no age for religious conversion/changing your religion? We set age limit for when someone can get a driver’s license, vote in election, legal age of drinking, join the military, get married or be held responsible for criminal acts.

Reference

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/03/368049116/from-german-teen-to-isis-jihadist-a-fathers-struggle-to-understand

Everyone is fighting for ideologies

Some of the wealthy Sunni Muslim countries in the Middle East are very much focused on waging an ideological warfare against the Syrian government by supporting various rebel factions/groups that are actively trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. Their belief is that Assad is a dictator and that the Sunni population of Syria is being oppressed. I’m not sure why Assad is being single out for being a bad leader/dictator while most, if not all, of the Middle East countries are ‘governed’ by self-proclaim kings and highly corrupt governments that are actively suppressing their Sunni population (e.g Egypt).

Many youths especially in western countries are deluded or dumb enough to join this war by believing that they are serving a higher cause.

Iran, Russia, Syria currently under Assad, and probably half of Lebanon are on the other side, preferring a safe bet like Assad than a regime change. Has revolution or regime change ever worked in the Middle East or Muslim countries?

The Syrian war seems to have a very sectarian nature (Shia-vs-Sunni). I sense that many have incorrectly assumed that Assad, who happens to be an Allawite via his family connection, is a Shia (or more specifically a follower of the Iranian Shia faith). In recent time, the Allawis of Syria has been trying to portray a more Islamic outlook; by becoming more mainstream, adopting many practices of Sunnism and slowly pushing away most of the secretive stuff that exist in their creed but is virtually unknown in the Muslim world.

Iran, who has a close working relationship with Assad, has been working hard to sell the Allawite of Syria as a ‘mini Shia sect’ or follower of an Islamic sect that may closely resemble Shiasm. I think this stance taken by Iran regarding the Allawite sect is slightly misleading and also hypocritical when you consider that Iran is the biggest prosecutor of Bahai sect. Iran considers anyone following the Bahai religion/sect as an apostate (state of being taken out of the Islamic faith). Here’s the irony. Both Bahai and Allawi are holding beliefs that would be considered ‘apostate-worthy’ (in fact I would even go further by saying that this belief that most find offensive is of the exact same nature/same spectrum), but only Bahais are single out for impropriety but not the Allawis. So why is there a double standard?

Perhaps we need to be fighting less for ideology (political, religion or on social issues). More time and efforts should be spent to alleviate the real suffering of the people.

Syrians are going to suffer more this winter and the next year is also not looking very good.

More than 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt are facing a disastrous and hungry winter after a funding crisis forced the UN’s World Food Programme to suspend food vouchers to hundreds of thousands forced into exile by the conflict. Syria’s three-and-a-half year civil war has killed more than 200,000 people, displaced 6.5 million within the country and forced more than 3 million to seek refuge beyond its borders.

Here's the list of countries that are funding the World Food Program. The United States of America is the largest donor contributing half of the program budget to feed the hungry around the world.

References
http://www.wfp.org/about/funding/year/2014

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/syrias-second-front/1-7-million-syrian-refugees-to-lose-their-main-source-of-food-aid/

http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/hMl1etAck9hlzfgVdkGGajK5NkygaES4/war-and-hunger-swiping-your-card-lion-whisperer/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/01/syrian-refugees-food-crisis-un-world-programme

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/18/world-food-programme-cut-aid-syria

Attacking feminists has become the number one tactic of Islamists

The news-medias have been busy discussing Turkey’s Erdogan’s latest remark directed against the feminists. What he said was very trivial and boring, in my opinion, but apparently it was offensive enough to get many folks on cyber world riled up.

Not many women identify themselves with the feminist movement, not even when they want to be appreciated for their contribution or be treated as equal. If a girl/woman wants an opportunity to go to school/college/university or work for wealth then she is not a feminist. It just makes a good sense for everyone (male and female) to be educated as much as possible and have good jobs for the betterment of the whole family and the society in general.

He is also wrong about women and motherhood. Most women do not reject motherhood. In fact more women accept motherhood than most men, otherwise how do you explain deadbeat husbands/fathers and children who are being raised by single mothers?

Generalizing that all women are bad is just as bad as generalizing that all men are bad. You’ll find good and bad among both genders, religious and also non-religious. Religions do not have a monopoly on morality. Religious people can be motivated to do great things or they can also be driven to commit heinous barbaric acts.

I don’t believe for a single sec that Erdogan’s latest remark is sudden or was not pre-planned. It came at a very convenient time, when people were just starting to pay attention about his luxurious grand palace. You would think that someone like Erdogan who is so very much in love with Islam would prefer a modest accommodation (you know what Islam says about your house: “Your hut in dunya/world will be replaced by grand palaces in akhira (after life) if you were virtuous”).

Not long ago we had a buddy of Erdogan who was attacking ‘slutty’ women for abandoning their husband and going with their boyfriend.

Reference

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkish-president-equality-between-men-and-women-is-against-nature-9879993.html

Muslim women competing in beauty contest?

I’m reading this news about a beauty competition where most of the participants are Muslim and are dressed in Islamic appropriate dresses. The Annual Muslimah Award

I’m too lazy to find the exact articles and pictures. You should google if interested.

The 25-year-old computer scientist Fatma Ben Guefreche beat out 17 other finalists from around the world, who were required to wear traditional headscarves in the competition, which assessed not only the contestants' appearances but also their piety and religious knowledge.

The purpose?

The World Muslimah Award contest is held exclusively for Muslim women and has been presented as an alternative to Western beauty pageants.

Beauty contests, in my opinion, are silly and exploitive. They don’t serve any useful purpose nowadays …. unlike a few hundred years ago when inspecting physical appearances of someone/something was important especially when the world was very much in the business of selling and purchasing slaves (human) and livestock. Slaves and livestock like bulls/oxen/horses were evaluated on physical characteristics (teeth, legs, hooves, length, height etc) because these (attributes/appearances) were perceived to be indicative of good health/strength/capable to serve a purpose.

Beauty contest generally attract much attention, mainly positive, because the competition has been ‘repurposed’ for serving greater good/ causes (scholarship, community engagement, charities, ambassadors of something, etc).

I personally don’t believe that there’s no hidden motive or it’s merely coincidence when beautiful/attractive people gets this much attention. There’s much financial reward/wealth to be made by all (participants/organizers/industry).



Reference
http://www.jpost.com/International/Tunisian-beauty-queen-calls-for-free-Palestine-at-pageant-382520

A Libyan Youth

I’m reading about a Libyan youth who has been made famous in recent times due to the influence of Internet (especially twitter). #TawfikBensaud

Tawfik Bensaud was 15 when he started his pro-democracy activism online in Benghazi, in the early days of Libya's 2011 revolution. He was 18 when he was gunned down for his views.

Here’s an eulogy about him from someone who not only knew him but also his good work

Despite his very young age, I saw a very charismatic young man, full of joy and good humour. He was very different to boys his age. He was very energetic. He showed strong interest in making positive change within his society in Libya. He was an activist, a reporter, a blogger and a great debater. Tawfik was almost engaged in everything. He was a member of many Libyan NGOs. He was member of the Committee of Supporting Women in Decision Making, a member in Bokra youth organization, a member in Benghazi El kher (or Benghazi Good) project, he was a board member of Mercy Human Rights foundation, a member of the Libyan debates club and many more. I certainly saw a young man with a sharp vision equipped with leadership skills.

Three weeks ago, on 19th of September 2014, Tawfik and his friend Sami were both assassinated in Benghazi, a city in the East of Libya. Since the 2011 Uprising, Libya has been experiencing instability and continuous violence. Many activists, journalists and members of the legal community were threatened, abducted or assassinated.

She continues to describe the chaos and violence in Libya.

Almost everything in current Libya is enforced by violence. Many political decisions and laws were enforced by violence. While violence seemed to be the only language spoken and practiced in Libya, Tawfik was a firm believer in the language of peace. This is illustrated in his written work published online. He enjoyed taking part in debates. People who know him well would tell you that Tawfik was an eloquent speaker who constructed his arguments coherently.

He’s definitely someone the youth can look up too. Sadly, he died very young.

References

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30096283

http://www.uk.upf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=713:the-3-leadership-lessons-i-learned-from-tawfik-bensaud&catid=36:peace-and-development&Itemid=58

Issue of transgender living in Muslim majority countries

I’m reading this news

Three Malaysian Muslim transgender people have won a landmark ruling after challenging a religious law banning them from cross-dressing; a decision activists are calling a victory for human rights in the conservative Muslim-majority country. A three-judge panel ruled that the Shariah law in Negeri Sembilan state that criminalizes any man who dresses or poses as a woman is unconstitutional. The judges said the law deprives transgenders of "the right to live with dignity." A lower court had dismissed the case, saying the three plaintiffs must adhere to Islamic law because they are Muslim and born male. The state's Islamic Religious Department can still appeal the ruling to the top federal court.

Organized religion (like Christianity and Islam) generally takes a black and white position on everything. It’s either black or white, no gray areas.

Dressing as per your designated gender is very big in Islam. You are either born a female or male. Hence, you should be dressed appropriately, according to your gender and also some customs/traditional values.

When what you are wearing becomes everybody’s business, then naturally people will desire to have guardians/enforcers of morality who could also act as fashion police, e.g Iran and Saudi Arabia. If you give batons/canes/whips and enough discretionary power to a group of people who would otherwise be unemployed/sit around doing pointless thing then you can put them to use serving higher powers.

It’s correct that we are technically designed to have a gender at the moment of conception. The information about our gender comes from xxorxy-chromosome.

However, nothing in creation is ever perfect. Imagine how boring life would be if everything works according to the blue-print. Wikipedia has a section about the possibility of having a chromosome arrangement that is contrary to the expectation

Humans, as well as some other organisms, can have a chromosomal arrangement that is contrary to their phenotypic sex, that is, XX males or XY females. See, for example, XX male syndrome and androgen insensitivity syndrome. Additionally, an abnormal number of sex chromosomes (aneuploidy) may be present, such as Turner's syndrome, in which a single X chromosome is present, and Klinefelter's syndrome, in which two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome are present, XYY syndrome and XXYY syndrome.[1] Other less common chromosomal arrangements include: triple X syndrome, 48, XXXX, and 49, XXXXX.

Very interesting science stuff.

In the past (based on my reading about Islamic history), when you had a situation where the gender of men or women were disputed, then they had a very crude mechanism using very low technology to resolve such matter. Yep, people were as inquisitive, curious and bothered back then as now especially when question of someone's gender is undecided (up in the air).

Since Islam is all about precedence (following an example from the past to guide future decision), then the Muslim are dealing with this issue in the same manner someone would deal with it over a thousand years ago (sometimes with very little regard to how the times and expectation have changed since then).

Many interesting scenarios are seen based on documented cases of people in real life that were confused about their gender due to various factors namely genetic, anatomical, physiology, mental, emotional, hormonal, environmental, societal etc.

References
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/11/07/malaysia-muslims-win-right-to-cross-dress.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system

End of the Islamic State?

Nowadays, the whole world is very much focused on the militant radical Islamic organization called the Islamic state; tracking the growth of the organization, the source of funding, their immediate and also long term goals, group movements, their supporters, the key players (internal and external to the organization) and the fights against them.

Many of the arm-chair supporters of the Islamic state on social media have gone quietly in recent times; perhaps some have lost interest after realizing that the much-hyped concept of a glorified worldwide ‘caliphate’ may not materialize in their lifetimes.

I’m reading this article about the demise of the Islamic State.

Suddenly, Islamic State just can’t fall fast enough. All summer, the press has been saying IS will soon be accepting the keys to every city on earth, an unstoppable jihadi juggernaut.

And now, after six weeks stalled out against a local militia in Kobane and going exactly nowhere in the over-hyped drive on Baghdad, even the mainstream press, represented by America’s paper of record, the New York Times, is saying what I said months ago: IS is just a Sunni Arab militia that will never take serious turf from the other powerful groups in the region, the Kurds of the north or the Shia of the south.

After being shown up in Kobane, IS has now been truly humiliated by US airstrikes that hit a meeting on the Syria/Iraq border and a big convoy near Mosu

Even without nonstop decimation via air attack, a universal caliphate is a doomed, dumb idea. Remember what Al Baghdadi said: “Syria does not belong to the Syrians, and Iraq does not belong to the Iraqis”? You know who would beg to differ? The Syrians. And the Iraqis. And it’s not even that simple, because the territories in which this war is being fought are fractal as sci-fi dream scenes, which means that “Syrians” devolves into dozens, maybe hundreds, of groups that hate each other and will fight to the death for their local turf. Kobane is a part of one turf, “Rojava” or Syrian Kurdistan; but it’s also a local turf on its own, and you can bet that the Kobane people have a few stereotypes of their Kurdish neighbors in the other evolving cantons like Afrin. You can bet that not all of Assad’s Alawites are fond of each other, either, even if they’re forced to stick together now against the Sunni who want to annihilate them. And those Sunni have never managed to make common cause for any length of time, even against a common enemy.

The rest of the article is also equally interesting, so please consider reading all.

Another related article is this" Study: Westerners join Islamic State because of peer pressure, not social media "

Today, the Guardian reports on an upcoming study from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Science (ICSR) which finds that British Muslims who join Islamic State fighters in Syria do so more often because of peer pressure than social media propaganda.

“While online recruitment plays a role, people go because they know people who are in Syria,” ICSR director Peter Neumann told the Guardian. “It’s all about networks in the real world.”

References

http://pando.com/2014/11/10/the-war-nerd-farewell-islamic-state-we-hardly-knew-ye/
http://pando.com/2014/11/06/study-westerners-join-islamic-state-because-of-peer-pressure-not-social-media/

Turkish Islamist President Palace

Undeniably, most Islamist and politicians are crooks. The biggest crooks are always those who are able to effectively manipulate religion for political purpose.

Here’re nice pictures of Turkish President Erdogan palace. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29912398

How much will it cost?

The 1,000-room palace built for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will cost about USD 615 000 000. The palace is bigger than the White House in Washington, the Kremlin in Moscow and even the Palace of Versailles near Paris.

Bear in mind that this palace is built specifically for the current (sitting) Turkey’s Islamist President. The white house is over 200 years and the Palace of Versailles is about 400 years. Current residents are merely occupying a historical residential mansion (temporarily)…

perhaps they are not really as important as Erdogan to have palaces dedicated to them.

Reference
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29912398

Religious Cartoon

No ..not the kind that makes average Pakistani goes beserk..

Check these out. Nice thought-provoking cartoons with some interesting messages.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/atheism

Is Bill Maher a Bigot?

Some students in Berkley have organized a campaign to prevent the comedian Bill Maher from giving a commencement speech in December. They’re upset because he insulted Islam.

In recent times, Bill Maher has been making a lot of anti-Muslim/anti-Islamic statements. I’ve been following some of his statements. Sometimes what he says is interesting and witty. But a lot of time, his opinions seem no different than other religious bigot despite him being areligious (he’s a staunched atheist).

So if you want smart and funny, with bit of smug and sexist for an added edge, Bill Maher is a perfect college speaker. His offense to a few sensitive Golden Bear souls is to note — in the sharp, exaggerated and blunt style that is the comedian’s stock in trade — that Islam is not all that tolerant.

Maher’s comments early this month drew on an exhaustive Pew Research Center survey last year of Muslim attitudes, based on 38,000 face-to-face interviews in 39 countries. The findings were fairly grim for fans of enlightenment. Most Muslims in at least six countries favored “executing those who leave Islam.” A majority also said homosexuality was morally wrong and that a wife should always obey her husband. Most troubling, the poll found high support in countries like Egypt and Iraq for “honor killings” — executing someone, usually a woman, for having sex out of wedlock.

Islam, said Maher on his HBO show, “is the only religion that acts like the Mafia” — killing heretics who say the wrong things or leave the faith. The forward-thinking social values that liberals favor are the very things that a majority of Muslims in some countries will not tolerate, he said.

Bill Maher said that based on some recent findings, Islam appears to be very intolerant, more so than any other faiths.

In my opinion, I think most of the religions of the world are intolerant in one way or the other. And this is simply because religions are not really designed to operate and work in the modern world with universal value system (equality without regards to faith, gender, age, sexual orientation etc). Islam is no more/less tolerant than Christianity or Hinduism or Judaism. Perhaps you’ll be able to find something good in any religion if you search for goodness hard enough.

Unfortunately, a lot of Muslim believes that Islam has already designed a perfect infallible system whereby if you follow all the stupid and silly rules documented in the supposedly historical literatures (that seems mostly doggy to me) then you are on path to a great life (here and hereafter).

I still think Bill Maher should be allowed to talk in the commencement. You can’t silence someone just because you disagree with what he/she has to say. All of us have opinions that are not always to the liking of everyone but we are still given a chance to express it.

Reference
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/berkeley-students-shouldnt-censor-bill-maher.html?_r=0

Fearing the Unknown

Most people believe that Halloween has a pagan roots. Halloween was Christianized only after Europe embraced Christianity.

To me Halloween is just a fancy costume party with sugary treats as the main course and can be a waste of a time. It’s fun for children and sometimes grow-ups. Like all festivals/celebrations, it has been extremely commercialized and can also be very heavy on your wallet.

Sometimes ago, I remember a few friends wanting to bring their children to my house for Halloween. Although we don’t really celebrate the Halloween at our home but you can’t really say ‘No’ to your friends’ children whose only mission in life is to grab and hoard as many candies as possible on the 31st of October. Also back then, I didn’t recall even a single downside of opening the door to the trick-a-treating crowd.

I opened the door on Halloween to my friends’ children. They were very happy and appreciative and we had a lovely time in my yard socializing – talking about mundane everyday stuff (nothing demonic in any way, shape or form).

All the noises and commotions in front of my house were attracting some folks in the neighborhood. Suddenly, a group of kids arrived, followed by another group of kids..and then another…it looked like Zombie apocalypse!

The kids went away with my fancy chocolates unfortunately :( Like I said, I wasn’t prepared for Halloween and the only candies we had were the fancy chocolaty type that we keep for ourselves mostly.

If you don’t live in a country that has a ‘culture’ of celebrating the Halloween then you are probably not sure why folks are dressing silly…you could also wonder if this ‘festival’ is just another form of imperialism undercover. Some of you may even wonder if you can join in all the fun …

I’m reading this news that the Muslims in some countries perceive Halloween as a threat.

A fatwa from Malaysia’s religious affairs ministry telling Muslims there they cannot celebrate Halloween is not the only troubling development to have hit the Southeast Asian country recently.

As The Wall Street Journal’s James Hookway writes, a Muslim religious edict denouncing Halloween parties in Malaysia might not seem like a significant move. Plenty of Christian groups also view the commerce and frivolity that accompany the celebration as vaguely pagan and a little bit off-color.

Fearing of the unknown? Or Islamic supremacy?

“Malay supremacy was the old school. People like (Isma president) Abdullah Zaik and others like him belong to the new school, and that’s Islamist supremacy,” professor James Chin of Monash University was quoted as saying. “It’s potentially more volatile.”

I personally don’t prefer someone else making decision about my belief. But seem like many don’t have that problem. Am I a rebel to think that only a brain dead religion needs gullible followers and yes-man type?


References
[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/halloween-draws-muslim-ire-in-malaysia-as-tensions-simmer-1414660190

[2] http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/halloween-ban-an-attempt-to-uphold-malay-supremacy-says-report

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Religious Guilt

Do you sometimes feel that the God is angry at you/your buddies/your family/community/etc because of some perceived shortcomings?

In Liberia, the National Christian Ebola Task Force, a group of different Christian denominations, began three days of prayer and dawn-to-dusk fasting on Wednesday to seek salvation from the "curse" of the epidemic, which has killed 2,705 people and infected 4,665 more in the West African country.

"Ebola is a virus from the devil. It's killing us because we have turned our back to God," said Reverend David G. Benitoe of the Task Force. "We have traded the worship of God with the worship of demons and witchcraft, and evil stuff is now happening in this country."

The most common theme in organized religion (like Islam and Christianity) is that God created every living beings; including the devil and also viruses.

But according to this Reverend, the Devil as well as the God are both in the business of creating evil entities to punish human being (God creating the devil and in return the devil creating the Ebola virus).


Religious guilt is a very powerful weapon that the clerics use often to blackmail the folks.

The easiest way to avoid this ‘guilt syndrome’ is to first not even believe in such nonsense. You can never be responsible for what is beyond your knowledge or control.

And if Ebola is indeed caused by your irreligiosity then why the babies/toddlers who are mostly sinless are also being punished?

And if you are absolutely certain that you are indeed being punished for the sins of others then why do you think God is being very selective here? Punishing some sinful folks and leaving many other sinful folks to prosper.

Bottom line is no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Selling Christianity as a religion of Science?

Recently the Pope proclaimed that God is not a magician with a magic wand. He meant to say that the creation is a scientific process and there’s no need to believe in a fairy tale beginning to the universe.

I guess the pope realized that it’s no longer possible to attract folks to Christianity by lies.

I guess I’m back to blogging

I was away briefly, but now the weather is turning winterish, so my outdoor activities are limited.

I’ve been making notes about a few things I wish to blog in the future. I’m also reading news, picking up interesting stories about human, reconnecting ideas of the past with the future, analyzing the flaws in arguments and re-thinking/entertaining the possibilities that maybe everything we know about religions is probably false.

Online recruitment

I was reading this article yesterday - Jihadi Recruiters Tailor Their Message To Online Trends

HARAS RAFIQ: By using names, by using hash tags - and they're actually quite popular. For example, they were using the recent World Cup hash tag as one way of people actually saying, oh, OK, let me have a look at what's going on there and going onto the hash tag and finding lots of ISIS recruitment material. For these guys, it's really about looking at what drives youngsters to go down that path.

RAFIQ: Well, I was part of the government task force after the bombings. And we came up with a strategy called preventing violent extremism which has evolved over the years. And there were really two parts to the strategy. The sharper part of it was intervening and providing interventions when youngsters have been identified as supporting violence or supporting terrorism. The bigger part of it and what we used to call the softer part of preventing violent extremism is really helping to build resilience with in communities - countering the narratives, countering the ideas - so that when youngsters have these messages, this lens created in front of them, they have the ability to push back.

Britain has finally came to her senses

We’ve been reading a lot of news about British residents travelling to middle-east countries like Iraq and Syria to cause havoc and promote instability. A lot of them have been radicalized by Internet Mullahs who are encouraging young men to go there and fight. Women are also encouraged to join the cause (only god knows for what).

Recent news from England

Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said arrests for suspected fanatics heading to or from Syria as well as fund-raisers are running at five times the rate of last year.

The warning came as he said “significant progress” was being made in the hunt for “Jihadi John”, the Briton who is believed to have beheaded American journalist James Foley.

Intelligence and security agencies in the UK and US are said to be close to identifying the man who was seen apparently murdering Mr Foley in a video broadcast by the terror group Islamic State.

It is believed the murder took place in Syria and had reignited concerns over the level of involvement by young British extremists in the conflict there and in Iraq as well as the risk they pose if they return.

It is estimated that at least 500 Britons have travelled to Syria to fight alongside extremists there, of who around half are thought to be from London.

In one of my post, I asked why the western governments (like France and UK) are not doing more to stem or stop these radicalized individuals. It’s as if the authorities in those (western) countries are turning blind eyes because violent/terror acts are committed in someone else’s backyard.

Perhaps, some may think that these men are doing everyone a favor by fighting Assad of Syria even though extremely brutal tactics (which are sadistic and completely against human nature) are employed against civilians and many innocents are deliberately targeted/killed in revenge.

One of the things I find lacking the most, not only in Muslim but also in western communities, is ethics. Everyone is looking after their convenience and their self-interest with no regards to greater good of humanity. And every method, no matter how unethical, is okay (halal) and can be used as long as it for our self-interest, goal and objective…

For the past three years, these same people have been committing extreme brutality against Syrians and Iraqis but the world has just started to notice it now? Did no one take note of the barbaric human-liver eating man?

If you read some of the profiles of some of the Jihadists, they all seem to be very sinful people and complete losers.

Choudhruy in 2010;he conned them (family) out of £25,000, under the false pretence of needing treatment for cancer, to go to Singapore, not once but twice for surgery. Once there, Choudhury, who was in perfect health, spent the money on prostitutes costing £200 a night, his penchant for young women revealed in text messages discovered by police. Back in Portsmouth, he resumed the habit. He went on what he called “lads’ holidays” to Morocco three times and twice more to Singapore in 2011 and 2012, while at the same time downloading lectures by extremist preachers, extolling the virtues of an Islamic caliphate. To atone for his sins, Choudhury decided to embark on a holy war.

One key figure was missing: Jaman, a former worker in a Sky customer service call centre, whose parents owned an Indian takeaway restaurant in Portsmouth. He had studied at an Islamic boarding school in London, but life in a call centre proved boring and un-demanding. In May last year, he went to Syria and began recruiting his eager friends. In messages posted on Twitter and other internet sites, he painted a romanticised version of life on the front line, boasting of a “five star jihad”.

References
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11053444/Portsmouth-jihadists-from-Primark-worker-to-enemy-of-the-state.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11057026/Arrests-of-would-be-British-jihadis-increase-five-fold.html

Book - My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, Israeli journalist Ari Shavit

Don’t really have time to read books for leisure, but this book sounds interesting enough.

Content:

The book is based on interviews with hundreds of Israelis — Jews and Arabs — as well as his own story and family history (two of Shavit's great-grandfathers became Zionists in the late 1800s).


Shavit, a columnist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, was born in 1957. He says serving in the Israeli army in the occupied territories left him "morally outraged" and turned him into a peace and human rights activist. But he writes that there are no simple answers in the Middle East, which is why he prides himself on challenging "both right-wing and left-wing dogmas."

"The great challenge for Israel is that there's an inherent contradiction between our values — which are basically democratic, liberal, humane values — and the brutal reality we live in,

On his generation's responsibility in Israel

I think that my grandparents' generation and my parents' generation had a difficulty in seeing the Palestinians because they were so much into this amazing revolution of creating the Jewish national home that they tended not to see the others.

I see it as my role — as my commitment and my mission, the mission of my generation — to balance the two: to keep Zionism, to maintain the Jewish state, to protect Israel, to love Israel, and yet to realize that we have done wrong to others and to try to limit that moral damage that was done and to enable the two people[s] to live, eventually, in the future, in peace after they come to terms with their dramatic and traumatized pasts.

Change of heart

When I was sent to a detention camp in Gaza in the early '90s, I was sent there as a guard, and that was probably the most traumatic experience I had as an Israeli because the fact that I found myself being a guard — serving my country by imprisoning others — was horrific for me.

I had the time there to sit in that watchtower in Gaza, to look at the beautiful Mediterranean, to see all the potential beauty of the country and what the country can be, and to see how these two people[s] — they were doing terrible things to us as terrorists, and we were doing terrible things to them, imprisoning them, occupying them, not giving them the fresh air needed to survive and live properly.

News of the week

Exciting news recently. A woman, ethnic Iranian, by the name Maryam Mirzakhani received the most prestigious award in mathematics, the Field medals or International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics.

In the long history of this award, since 1936, not even a single woman has won. So, this seems to be a rare occurrence, not only because of winning but also for proving that women are capable of pursuing mathematic, the discipline, at its highest level.

Maryam was born in Tehran in year 1977. Her undergraduate is from Sharif technology university and her Ph.D. in 2004 from Harvard University. She’s currently a professor at Stanford.

Guardian website has a story of how she became interested in mathematic.

Her success can be summed in following points, briefly:

• Interest and curiosity
• Having supportive parents
• Necessary background or fundamentals at a young age
• Realize what is still lacking within you
• Having the opportunity to pursue your interest and a complete freedom to dedicate your time and energy towards your passion
• ..move to a western country or to a nation that has a history of winning international awards?

References
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-13/maryam-mirzakhani-and-fields-medal-how-to-do-math-like-a-genius
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930522000799
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/2014/news_release_mirzakhani.pdf

Islamist schizophrenic or a pretender?

Recently, a western psychiatrist made the claim that Religious Fundamentalism is a Mental Disorder. By this if someone become influenced by Islamic extremism then that is a mental disorder just like any other disorder.

I felt that the idea was interesting enough to be pursued and made a post on my blog. However, I was also doubtful if these sorts of statements (someone’s mental state) can even be evaluated or validated objectively especially when you don’t have access to that person as a patient or his/her medical record.

Islamic teaching (at least the ancient form of it) only recognizes schizophrenia, mainly because the signs from people afflicted by it were clear enough and recognizable. We have rules and regulations on how to deal with schizophrenics and societal expectation of them. Islamic literatures also contain stories about a number of pretenders who had to fake their mental state in order to avoid severe punishment for having opinions that were against the conventional wisdom of the time.

Information about the brain and how it’s wired was not available back then and still not available in many of the Muslim communities because a lot of people are still living a very basic and primitive life. Hence people are mostly not aware that mental disorder can span a whole big spectrum

Secondly, it’s not easy for lay person to deal with mental issues (if he is suffering from it or has family members affected by it) because it requires expertise not available to most of us hence this area should be deal professionally (or in a professional manner by well trained professionals).

So, far I’ve noticed that even in western countries people don’t really get the help they need when they need until it’s too late. In Muslim society, sometimes a lot of people who are suffering from mental disorders or depressions have been crudely ‘misdiagnosed’ as suffering from a possession (usually by Jinns).


I was reading this news: Australian jihadist who posted decapitated head image is 'paranoid schizophrenic'


I’m quoting the relevant parts (or what I find interesting) here:

An Australian Islamist who proudly published a photo of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head in Syria is – according to psychiatrists who treated him – a paranoid schizophrenic who has hallucinated for years.

Days after he was widely described in Australia as "a lunatic", convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf was confirmed as a paranoid, schizophrenic depressive who has suffered mental illness since the 1990s by Dr Olav Nielssen, a leading Australian psychiatrist.

Following Dr Nielssen's assessment, a court sentenced Sharrouf to four years in prison and concluded his condition "predicated him towards
extremism and radicalisation by others".

Sharrouf, 33, a high-school dropout and former drug user, posted a photograph on Twitter of his son in northern Syria which was described by United States secretary of state John Kerry this week as one of the worst, most stomach-turning photos the world had ever seen.

Justice Anthony Whealy, the former Supreme Court judge who sentenced Sharrouf, said this week that the former defendant was "very" mentally ill and was unable to understand the court proceedings.

"His symptoms were quite severe, he was quite delusional," he told ABC News.

"He was overheard talking to other people when no one was there. This was observed on quite a few occasions and it was a state of mind that persisted for some time. He was unfit to plead and that means in legal terms that he was simply incapable of understanding what the court case would be about."

I’d really like to read more on this topic in the future. Some of the questions I have so far are

• Does Islamic radicalism/extremism attract people who have mental disorders?
• Does any form of radicalism/extremism make you lose your sanity (because we know that not all radicals are Muslim)
• The allegation in the newspaper was that this man already had a prior mental health situation and incarceration only made it worse. Did his lower functioning mental state made him embrace ideas (pushed by Islamic radicals)?
• Can we say that folks like us who are not interested in silly radicals’ ideas are at least very stable mentally?
• The judge dismissed the claim that somehow this man got away from the law system by pretending to be a mentally insane individual. Is the judge mistaken and is now trying to save himself or is the law system designed to let the criminals and the criminally insane walk away freely?

Reference
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11036230/Australian-jihadist-who-posted-decapitated-head-image-is-paranoid-schizophrenic.html

Egypt doesn’t get enough air time or attention

Really bad things are happening in the world. And the Medias are keeping us very well informed to these events so we continue to lose our faith in the humanity because you know how we all are attracted to negativity; like bees to flowers.

Egypt with her population over 80.7 million is one of the largest countries in the Arab world/Africa/Asia having over 90% of the population being Muslim. Two other countries similar in size (population and religious composition) are Turkey (74 million) and Iran (76.5 million).

Yesterday, Iran’s president said something very boring. It was so unremarkable that I can’t even recall what it is exactly. However it made the headline around the world. Hassan Rohani, Iran’s president is getting way too much publicity …like some Hollywood celebrity. Since Rohani doesn’t have a clown-like personality similar to his predecessor, Mr Ahmadinejad (Iran’s ex-President) and is not prone to silly outbursts, you’d think we wouldn’t be forced to read insignificant news from Iran…


Real crazy stuff is going on in Egypt. Western media have not been paying enough attention to it. Today is one-year-anniversary of one of the most brutal day you could imagine.

It was the day Egypt's security forces used automatic weapons, armored personal carriers and military bulldozers to raid and crush a month long sit-in protest by thousands of supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy.

According to a yearlong Human Rights Watch investigation released this week, at least 817 people were killed.

The rights group called it "one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history."

Remember Neda Soltan the Iranian girl who was shot to death in a protest which caused a massive outrage in the world?


This is equivalent to 800 Neda Soltans who died in a single day. Sadly not enough outrage was shown as much as when Neda Soltan was killed.

Let’s have a moment of silence to those who lost their life needlessly.

Reference
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/world/meast/egypt-sayah-rabaa-anniversary/

Yezidi sect in Iraq is in danger of being wiped out

Iraq is the home of the largest population of Yezidi (Yazidi) sect. Sadly, they are now in danger of being wiped out by the Islamic State terrorists (ISIS).

Yezidi is a very secretive ancient/pre-Islamic religion. Some have claimed that Yezidi’s sect is a remnant of the old Zoroastrian religion because of some similarity in belief between the two faiths. Others have claimed that Yezidi is a syncretic religion (mixture of Pagan/Animism, Christianity and Islam).

A couple of days ago, we read the news of an ISIS attack on a Yezidi village. The ISIS fighters killed many Yezidis, took a few hundred female as slaves and threaten to slaughter more if the rest of the population doesn’t abandon their devil worshipping cult and embrace the Islamic faith. ISIS also gave a similar ultimatum to the Christians of Iraq.

The Yezidi population fled to the mountainous region of Sinjar, their historical homeland.


This situation was soo alarming that even the President of the United States, Mr Obama, felt that the recent crisis in Iraq (ISIS inflected) has reached a critical stage and that the US need to step up their game in Iraq. The US is sending weapons (possibly to the Kurds if not a direct military intervention) and also humanitarian aid to the people (Yezidi and the Christians) who are trapped in this conflict.

In the book The Cult of the Peacock Angel By R.H. Woolnough Empson, Yezidi not only is connected to ancient religion of Iran but also to ancient Iraqi religion.

Zoroastrianism had undergone numerous and sometimes almost incompatible changes before Yezidism came into existence. There are, however, several points in which Yezidi ideas approach the old Zoroastrian. Thus, there is a tradition that the term Yezidi represents Yazdan, the Good Spirit, as opposed to Ahriman the Evil Spirit. It may be noted, too, here that it has been said that among the Zoroastrian Parsees of India Yezid Farfar is the Evil Spirit. In modern Persian both Yazd and Yazdan are used as terms for God, and Yazd Farfar are used as terms for God, and…

Other reminiscences of Zoroastrianism among the Yezidis are the clear persistence among them of Dualist principles, as shown in the rival Spirits of Good and Evil with equal powers, and in the worship of Fire, besides others already noticed.


It may be mentioned also that, like the Zoroastrian Parsees, the Yezidis do not admit converts from other religions, but this exclusiveness was far from being an attribute of the older Zoroastrianism, which was a vigorous missionary religion.

Among the later Zoroastrians generally, ritualism especially that connected with magic became all powerful. And it is to be observed that some of the Yezidi village sheikhs or head men claim magic powers.

Zoroastrian objection to the burial of corpses, because their presence in the earth would pollute it, seems to survive in the Yezidi custom of not allowing earth to touch the corpse as it is laid in the grave for munkir/nakir to descend from heaven to examine it.

There is another interesting point in this connection which seems to have its origin in the old Zoroastrianism. Wood is collected in large quantities at the shrine of ‘Adi to be burn at the annual sacrifice of a sacred white bull to the Sun-god Shamsu’ddin. There is also, as has been already noticed, a ceremony of the capture of a white bull at certain festivals. A white sheet (kifri) is used to wrap the corpse at funerals, a widow must wear white clothing, and white as a colour is held in much esteem.

Under the Sabean Tradition: Yezid ibn Abi Anisa, a heterodox Sabean leader, is believed by some, without much reason, to have been the founder of the Yezidis, who was looked on as his companions. This tradition is, however, more than doubtful, as that great authority ibn-Hazm of Cordova (994-1027) calls the leader in question Zaid ibn Ubaissa, but it may be noted that ibn-Hazm’s father, who was a high official, claimed descent (perhaps apocryphally) from a Persian, Yezid ibn Abi Sufian. Historically, Yezid ibn Abi Anisa founded a sect called Yezidiyas, which does not appear to have been in any way connected with the Yezidis. But he was a Khariji, who were, if anything, orthodox puritan Muhammadans, as are their modern representatives the Ibadiyas (Abadiyas). The only thing that seems to give colour to the idea that he could have been the founder of the Yezidis is a statement that ‘God will send a new Quran to a prophet among the Persians, and he will found a new religion for them, divine in the same sense as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which will be no other than that of the Sabiun mentioned in the Quran. Here, however, it is clear that the Mandaeans or Christians of St John the Baptist are referred to, and they were very far indeed from being at one with the Yezidis.

Nevertheless, Sabean tenets may have had much to do with the religion of the Yezidis. As-Sabia/Sabaean, is a name for two distinct sects: 1) the Mandaeans or Judeo-Christians of Mesopotamia, who were Baptists and known as Christians of St John the Baptist 2) The Sabaens of Harran (Carrhoe) who were Ghulat or Extremists, and largely pagan, but for political reasons they, too adopted baptism, and they had an important literature in Syriac. The as-Sabiun of the Quran were Mandaeans, but it is the creed of the Sabaeans of Harran that might well have been absorbed, in part at any rate, by the Yezidis among whom baptism is a prominent rite. .. The Sabeans of Harran disappeared about 1033.

As-Sharastani classes them among those who admit spiritual substances (ar-Ruhaniyun) especially the great astral spirits. They recognize as their first teachers two philosopher prophets, adhimun(agathodaemon = the good spirit) and Hermes who have been identified with Seth and Idris respectively. Orgheus was also one of the prophets. They believe in a creator of the world, wise holy, not produced and of inaccessible majesty who is reached through the intermediary of the spirits. The latter are pure and holy in substance, in act and state as regards their nature they have nothing corporeal neither physical faculties, nor movements in place, not changes in time. They are our masters, our gods, our intercessors with the sovereign lord. By purifying the soul and chastising the passions one enters into relations with them. As to their activities, they produce renew and change things from state to state.

This is the snippet from the book (mentioned in the reference below) pertaining to the Yezidi and its connection to other ancient religions. You may also read my other posts about the Yezidi sect by clicking on the label on the right side of the blog under the heading research into other sects/religion (Yezidi).


References
The Cult of the Peacock Angel By R.H. Woolnough Empson

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/09/yazidis-iraq-refugees-isis
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28756544

Pre-Islamic Pagan of Arabia

The following page entitled Ancient Forms of {Pre-Islamic} Pagan Worship has a summary of what people used to believe.

The five pre-Islamic pagan deities are mentioned by name: Wadd, Suwâ`, Yagûth, Ya`ûq and Nasr.

The quran also mentioned pre-Islamic goddesses: Lât, `Uzzâ, and Manât.

The website also stated that the pre-Islamic Arabs borrowed some Gods from neighboring religious cults.

It is not clear whether these names are to be connected with true Arabic verbal roots or are merely Arabicised forms of names derived from foreign cults, such as those of Babylonia or Assyria, the region of Noah's Flood.

It may be noted that the five names of deities mentioned here to represent very ancient religious cults are well-chosen. They are not the names of the deities best known in Mecca, but rather those which survived as fragments of very ancient cults among the outlying tribes of Arabia, which were influenced by the cults of Mesopotamia (Noah's country). The Pagan deities best known in the Ka`ba and round about Mecca were Lât, `Uzzâ, and Manât. (Manât was also known round Yathrib, which afterwards became Medina.) See liii. 19-20. They were all female goddesses. Lât almost certainly represents another wave of sun-worship: the sun being feminine in Arabic and in Semitic languages generally. "Lât" may be the original of the Greek "Leto", the mother of Apollo the sun-god (Encyclopædia of Islam, I., p. 380). If so, the name was brought in prehistoric times from South Arabia by the great Incense Route (n. 3816 to xxxiv. 18) to the Mediterranean. `Uzzâ probably represents the planet Venus. The origin of Manât is not quite clear, but it would not be surprising if it also turned out to be astral. The 360 idols established by the Pagans in the Ka`ba probably represented the 360 days of an inaccurate solar year. This was the actual "modern" Pagan worship as known to the Quraish contemporary with our Prophet. In sharp contrast to this is mentioned the ancient antediluvian worship under five heads, of which fragments persisted in outlying places, as they still persist in different forms and under different names in all parts of the world where the pure worship of God in unity and truth is not firmly established in the minds and hearts of men.

References: The classical work on Arabian idol-worship is Ibn al-Kalbi's Kitrâb-ul-asnâm, of the late second century of the Hijra. The book is not easily accessible. Our doctors of religion have evinced no interest in the study of ancient cults, or in comparative religion, and most of them had not before them the results of modern archæology.

Reference
[1] http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/pip.htm

Your daughters are no longer safe

Police in Spain arrested two young ladies that were going off to join the Islamic State militants.

(Reuters) - Two young Spanish women, one of them under 18, have been arrested in the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla on suspicion of trying to join an Islamic State militant cell in the Middle East, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. The women were detained on Saturday trying to cross from Melilla into Morocco, where they planned to make contact with a network that would transport them to conflict zones in Iraq or Syria, the ministry said. The older one was 19. The younger one was not identified but media reports said she could be as young as 14.


Thousands of young people have set off from European countries to join Islamist rebels fighting in Syria, often finding recruitment agents through social media.

Teenage girls are no longer safe even in their home as too many weirdoes on Internet are trying to lure them away from their family.

Reference
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-spain-security-jihadists-idUSKBN0G41FL20140804

Women should not laugh out loud

Turkey, in the recent time, has been going through an interesting ‘Islamic’ phase where more people are turning into ‘practicing’ Muslim. The rise of Turkey’s Islamification coincides with the 2002 landslide victory of the AKP party of Turkey. I remembered that back then some folks blamed corruption, harsh implementation of secularism, lack of religious freedom and the repeat failures to gain entry into the white Christian club (European Union) as the cause of why many Turks were simply fed-up with existing political parties and were even willing to try something new.

The Turkish AKP political party seems to want to represent all Turks using modern democratic principles with progressive policies while at the same time wants to be an ‘Islamic’ party with traditional Islamic ideology and way of life to many of her followers. As expected these two systems don’t really work very well together.

Recently, one of the high ranking politicians from the Islamic party (AKP) had this to say

Bulent Arinc, speaking at a ceremony to mark Eid - celebrating the end of Ramadan- urged Turkish women to abide by a rigorous code - and know what is "haram," or forbidden. "A woman will know what is haram and not haram," he said. "She will not laugh out loud in public. She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chasteness."

Turkey had the most progressive rights for Muslim women vs anywhere else in the world. Turkish women had almost all the rights that a male in her country would have. They were not required to be obedient to their father, grandfather/brothers or husband (the male hierarchy in the family) unless they themselves wish to. They were not restricted from pursuing any career of interest. They were not required to refer to ancient Islamic literatures or read up books written by Mullahs about women rights and proper behavior. They were also not restricted socially in any form (not requiring male companion for traveling or be fully covered from head to toe) or forced to stay away from participating in social arena. So, being born a female didn’t put them at a disadvantaged position. So naturally, after many years of no one telling these women how they should behave or conduct themselves in public, we now have a guy who is trying to reset the clock on feminism and naturally women didn’t like that. So, he’s being ridiculed publicly.

First off, based on most authentic sources, what the guy is saying about how a good Muslim woman should behave (not laughing loudly) is firmly established in the Islamic teaching. The most common (logical) reason provided is that if you laugh to loudly then a pervert will fall in love with you so it’s for your own safety. This regulation is not just single women but also for married women (all women in general).

I don’t really agree with this approach that your life should be entirely focused on what a pervert think about you. You should do what is sensible to you. Besides, laughing is not something you can control or have a good control on. It’s one of the most natural human expressions like sneezing, crying or feeling sad and not everyone is acting out when they display that sort of emotions. And most societies have rules that punish the ‘perverts’ without victimizing the victims.

Islamists generally have a tendency to equate women as Satan’s Weapon of Mass Misguidance. Women have to be covered up properly and strictly and she has to watch her behaviors at all time so she doesn’t become a loose woman whose only mission in life is to orchestrate the downfall of men. You can even find this thinly veiled attack on women in the politician statement.

Now on Internet, everyone is lol, at him and not with him.

His comments were widely ridiculed, with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter ablaze with pictures of women laughing and the hashtag, #direnkahkaha (ignore him - laugh) was born.

The politician dig himself further when he was defending his remark with more derogatory comments … about how women like to have affairs when they have perfectly good husbands at home … obviously it never occurred to this man that there’s also another guy involve here who is perhaps just as much to be blame as the woman. The Islamists don’t see that. They always see everything as a one-sided affair where men are being victimized by women and not the other way around.

Reference

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11005428/Emma-Watson-joins-protest-against-Turkish-politicians-claim-women-should-not-laugh-out-loud.html

Pagan

Paganism is on the rise. By Pagan, I don’t mean ancient religion like Hinduism whose followers have been practicing their faith for thousands of years without conflict, severe repression or interference from other organized religions like Islam or Christianity.

I’m more interested in extinct religion like the belief system of the pagan of Arabia before the pre-Islamic era and also old western religions like Druidism, Wiccan and Asatru (before the emergence of Christianity).

While we can hardly find people claiming to worship or practice the ancient pagan religion of Arabia (maybe because we don’t exactly know what that is?), we can most certainly find some people (living mostly in western countries) who unashamedly and without even a slight hesitation confessing to have abandon their parents’ Christian faith and adopted the pagan religion of their ancestors.

Paganism is defined as

a broad group of indigenous and historical polytheistic religious traditions—primarily those of cultures known to the classical world. In a wider sense, paganism has also been understood to include any non-Abrahamic, folk, or ethnic religion.

You can find plenty of Youtube videos of folks who have embraced new version of old pagan religion like the Asatru (contemporary paganism )

Among reasons cited by them for abandoning the faith they were born into are:

• They no longer view Christianity as a divine religion. Christianity too has been deeply influenced by paganism
• They perceived Christianity as a ‘foreign faith’ because it originates from the Middle-East while the pagan religion of their ancestor has a very strong ‘local’ (western) root
• They reject organized religions (all of the main ones) because these religions don’t offer much benefit to mankind
• Paganism has allowed them to have a deeper and closer relationship to the nature

These are some of the reasons given by them.

Moving on.

We don’t know much about the pagan religion of Arabia. Did Islam ‘wiped’ out the old faith completely? I don’t think so because I’ve heard some people claiming that while the pagan concept of God of Arabia no longer exist but Islam has heavily borrowed many of the traditions/practices before Islam and incorporated in the new faith.

I’m not exactly sure if the Muslim community back then actively prosecuted people for following something unconventional or if the concept of conventional even existed back then. Based on the historical development of various sects and school of thoughts, people were not shy from expressing their ideas and we have written record of that. Unfortunately, it’s no longer the case now because if you have any opinions that seem unorthodox..you may get yourself kill..simply for even thinking about it. The society has really retrogressed much.

In the next few posts, we will hopefully look into the pagan religion of Arabia.