Remember Death (Urdu)

Based on the Kalam of Hazrat Khwaja Azizul Hasan Sahab Ghauri Majzoob (RA)

Source : YT

Salafism of Nasiruddin Albani

Allah (SWT) says in the Noble Qur'an that people who take heed of divine revelation are few.

What about the rest?
Well they find it boring.


Then there are people who can make it interesting for the masses by making fun of traditional figures, arguments and approaches. By ridiculing them.

There are many streams of thought along these lines and salafism is the broadest of these.

In fact every salafi is a sect unto himself.

Here we shall take one such case and make some observations on his approach. This is Nasiruddin Albani.

He fought with his father and hence was turned out of the house.

He reached Saudi Arab and had a clash with the scholars there for trying to force his opinion on them.

He insisted that one should make one's own interpretation of the Noble Qur'an and the Hadith and trash all the traditional scholarship.

Beloved prophet (SAW) said that my time is the best and then the time after me and so on. By his approach Albani invited the current generation of Muslims to abandon the earlier scholars and hence expressly went against above Hadith of beloved prophet (SAW).

Religion has propository and prohibitory content.
Eat halal is propository, assertive and affirmative.

Do not eat haraam is prohibitory.

Human knee jerk reaction is to detest prohibitory order.
They want freedom. Freedom from religious restrictions.

Traditional interpretation of Islam adopts all those restrictions in interpretation that are part of Islam.

Albani did away with such restrictions.
Interpret the text, the Noble Qur'an and the Hadith, yourself, he asserted.

Modern youth, freedom loving, bohemian, self assured, simply laps it up.

This video has more on him that is still quite brief.

Here is a short list of some of his critics.
Ramadan Al-Buti (RA), Mahmood Mamdooh (HA), Abul Fattah Abu Guddah (RA), Muhammed Awwamah (HA), Al-Hasan Al-Saqqaf (HA), Habibur Rahman Azmi (RA)

Revival of Muslim Ummah

For quite some time it has been weighing rather heavy on my mind that I should off load the massive weight on my conscience in a series of book marked as the Revival of Muslim Ummah. A few days ago I jotted down following tentative titles.

Revival of Muslim Ummah Series

(1) A Short Introduction to Islam

(2) A Biography of Beloved Rasoolallah (SAW)

(3) A Temporal History of Muslims

(4) A Short View of Saviours of Islamic Spirit

(5) Spirit of Islam in Brief

(6) Review of Aligarh Movement

(7) Review of Deoband Revival of Islam

(8) Rebutting Atheism

(9) Social and Cultural Space of Islam

(10) Muslims on Science

(11) Business, Economy, Commerce and Finance

(12) Political State of Muslim Ummah

(13) Security and Military Environment of Muslim Ummah

(14) Islam and Muslim in India

(15) Islam and Psychology

(16) Western Who Hated Islam

(17) They Appreciated Islam

(18) Iqbal's Approach

(19) Intellectual Legacy of Islam

(20) Modern Guiding Lights of Islam

I will be more than happy if my idea is stolen and others do the needful.

Muslim Public Intellectuals

We do have Professor Irfan Habib but I would like to talk about those Muslim public intellectuals who do not have problems with their Muslim identity and Islam as a way of life.

Do we have them?

In this BBC piece S. Biswas talks about intellectuals in political life in India.

What about Muslims?
What about Aligs in particular?
Well they are conspicuous by their absence.

And that is abdication of responsibility for Sir Syed would have liked them to take up this responsibility too.

Asra Nomani in Washington Post

Yours truly has been lately having some pangs of optimism.
That was because of some perceptible change in US policy towards Islam and Muslims.
A US diplomat said that the Taliban is not a terrorist group but a militant group.
Seeing the nature the past engagement between the two of them this was a major adjustmant on part of US.
Then Barack Obama explicitly said that the US is not at war with Islam.
That, obviously, was very pleasant.
Then he again said that the meltdown in Iraq and Afghanistan is of their past mistakes.
That was a clear break up from Bush policies.

So yours truly was rather happy.

But then this piece from January 16 Washington Post came to my attention and this melted the euphoria.

Who is Asra Q Nomani?
She has only two claims to fame, or infamy.
That she is an unwed mother.
And she is from the descendants of mighty Muslim scholar Allama Shibli Nomani.
And then you have the western society that will not only accommodate anti anti-Muslims and anti-Islamic elements but will also provide them a platform to broadcast their views to the world.

But perhaps the new Obama approach will take some time to seep to the level of the editors of the Washington Post.

The US inherited an anti-Muslims and anti-Islam attitude from their ancestors from Europe.

But this is certainly against American ideals.
Our Muslim brothers in the US have to bring this home in the US.
Don't just do Dawah about five fundamentals of Islam.
Also tell them that they do not have to inherit the crusading mindset.

In the rest of this post I intend to dissect the WP piece by Nomani.

***

“You have shamed the community,” a fellow Muslim in Morgantown, W.Va., said to me as we sat in a Panera Bread in 2004. “Stop writing.”

She is clearly playing with the American sentiment.
Why should the US take up her case just because she wants to practice a Islam that is contrary to the traditional understanding? Is it so easy to poke your nose in other people's values? She is clearly aiming for the US weakness inherited from Europe. Oppose anything and everything Muslim and Islamic. US saw through the treachery of Ayan Hirsi Ali is it so difficult to see through Asra's design?

Then 38, I had just written an essay for The Washington Post’s Outlook section arguing that women should be allowed to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in segregated spaces, as most mosques in America are arranged. An American Muslim born in India, I grew up in a tolerant but conservative family. In my hometown mosque, I had disobeyed the rules and prayed in the men’s area, about 20 feet behind the men gathered for Ramadan prayers.

It is unlikely that the Scholars of Islam will concede to her ideas of mix praying in the mosques. Islam was perfected for us more than fourteen centuries ago. Anyone familiar with the robustness of Islam theology will understand that she has a lost cause on her hands. Anyway why should Islam be decided or modified by her? Just because she could not or would not control her carnal desires we should be moving back the borders of Islam so that she can be accommodated? It looks plain ridiculous. To commit a mistake is bad enough. To expect the society to regularize it is plain cheeky at best and stupid in reality.

Later, an all-male tribunal tried to ban me. An elder suggested having men surround me at the mosque so that I would be “scared off.” Now the man across the table was telling me to shut up.

Here there is allusion to male orientation of Islamic society. The assumption is that all-male tribunal will of necessity will be unfair to a woman. Again she is playing with the feminist mindset that of necessity is against things Muslim and Islamic. The matter of truth is that Prophethood in Islam is over and concluded and all of the Prophets were males. Prophets were the law givers of Muslims by God's orders and that makes Islamic society patriarchal.  It is pointless to point out to people like Asra Nomani that the noble Qur'an explicitly says that man and woman are equal. People like her or her supporters will simply not listen. they are driven by an agenda and that is not so subtle. They simply have to be seen and understood to be what they stand for. For most of the last few decades and earlier real force behind their machinations was the stick of military and economic power of the west combined with their soft talk. at the moment both seem to be melting.

“I won’t stop writing,” I said.

Here she is simply positioning herself as a crusader. At the moment Muslims don't seem to be scared in spite of heavy casualties being inflicted upon them. After thoroughly thrashing Muslims for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq the US/NATO clique barely managed to escape from Afghanistan. They did not claim any victory. Why is reality blocked to her? The west has completely lost its grip over Islam and Muslims but the news has not percolated to her.

  It was the first time a fellow Muslim had pressed me to refrain from criticizing the way our faith was practiced. But in the past decade, such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with hideous, disproportionate responses.

In this paragraph there is multiple disconnection with reality.
And there is dishonesty also in this piece.
She is making it to be a case of reforming Islam.
In reality it has been a case of her desire to get her status as an unwed mother regularized.
The west was mostly Christian and it used Christianity as a religion till it became impossible and in fact detrimental to well being to hace Christianity around. This was because of the atrocities of the Church.
And then the west shunted it to private quarters.
They want the same for Islam.
But why should that be?
When they can not have real issues against Islam they cooked up.
And these are the so called modern values that are being slapped against islam and Muslims.
And then there are opportunistic Muslims who would like to take advantage of this situation.
Like her.
Luckily the number of such people is rather small.

The campaign began, at least in its modern form, 10 years ago in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a mini-United Nations comprising the world’s 56 countries with large Muslim populations, plus the Palestinian Authority — tasked then-Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu with combating Islamophobia and projecting the “true values of Islam.” During the past decade, a loose honor brigade has sprung up, in part funded and supported by the OIC through annual conferences, reports and communiques. It’s made up of politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists.

A treacherous paragraph. Treachery with Islam and Muslims and trying to fool her hosts. She is certainly not a friend of west. She has an axe to grind and thinks that the west will fall for her trick. The west might find it difficult to see their own Islamophobia but her trick is not that opaque. They will see through it. I wonder why they gave her this space in the WP.

In 2007, as part of this playbook, the OIC launched the Islamophobia Observatory, a watchdog group based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with the goal of documenting slights against the faith. Its first report, released the following year, complained that the artists and publishers of controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad were defiling “sacred symbols of Islam . . . in an insulting, offensive and contemptuous manner.” The honor brigade began calling out academics, writers and others, including former New York police commissioner Ray Kelly and administrators at a Catholic school in Britain that turned away a mother who wouldn’t remove her face veil.

So? The west can have its UNO and NATO and the World Bank but Muslims can not have OIC? Why?

May be she simply should eat her heart out. They have a word in the west for her. Loser.

“The OIC invented the anti-‘Islamophobia’ movement,” says Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a frequent target of the honor brigade. “These countries . . . think they own the Muslim community and all interpretations of Islam.”

An this time she brought a puppet out of her called Jasser out of her hat. Pathetic show madam magician.

It is true that west by and large denies that there is Islamophobia. Even my spell checker does not have this word. But that is simply western strategy. The moment they acknowledge its existence they got to do monumental readjustments in their policies towards Islam. It is simply the inertia.

 Alongside the honor brigade’s official channel, a community of self-styled blasphemy police — from anonymous blogs such as LoonWatch.com and Ikhras.com to a large and disparate cast of social-media activists — arose and began trying to control the debate on Islam. This wider corps throws the label of “Islamophobe” on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. Their targets are as large as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as small as me.

I do not know about Ikhras but Loon Watch  simply administered some western medicine to the west. Of course she does not realize. She is clueless about the state of affairs. The west is no more so sure of its ideals because these ideals have not only started failing in their dealings with Islam and Muslims but at home also they can be clearly seen to be failing. Falling European population and random US shootings are two main manifestations of western materialism
failing as a way of life.

But she is right when she calls herself small and unfortunately Netanyahu is large but she is pathetic when she talks of herself in the same sentence as him.

The official and unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. They bank on an important truth: Islam, as practiced from Malaysia to Morocco, is a shame-based, patriarchal culture that values honor and face-saving from the family to the public square. Which is why the bullying often works to silence critics of Islamic extremism.

Islam and Muslims are reeling under western onslaught on military, media, economic, cultural and money power. That is opposite of what she is trying to convince us. If tomorrow the west starts reeling under Muslim onslaught of military, media, economic and money power than this sinner will be pleased to criticize Muslims.

“Honor brigades are wound collectors. They are couch jihadis,” Joe Navarro, a former supervisory special agent in the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, tells me. “They sit around and collect the wounds and injustices inflicted against them to justify what they are doing. Tragedy unites for the moment, but hatred unites for longer.”

There is a faint truth in that. But hey we might decide against wound collection at the spurt of the moment. So what if They thrashed Iraq without weapons of mass destruction? Obama is accepting that they were wrong! So what if they dumped a million tons of gunpowder in Afghanistan? They are not calling taliban terrorists anymore. And to fight the Islamic State they depend upon Muslims like Kurds. Is that wound collecting? Hardly.

In an e-mail exchange, the OIC’s ambassador to the United Nations denied that the organization tries to silence discussion of problems in Muslim communities.

Silly of him. Who decided that Muslims are answerable to UN when they have been real ineffective tools to solve the Palestine problem.

 The attacks are everywhere. Soon after the Islamophobia Observatory took shape, Sheik Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, grumbled about “defamatory caricatures of our Master and Prophet Muhammad” and films that smear Islam, according to the OIC’s first Islamophobia report.

She made a similar complain above. This is repetition to complain of the wounds again and again with different names. This is unorganized rant. She lacks a case.

  The OIC helped give birth to a culture of victimization. In speeches, blogs, articles and interviews widely broadcast in the Muslim press, its honor brigade has targeted pundits, political leaders and writers — from TV host Bill Maher to atheist author Richard Dawkins — for insulting Islam. Writer Glenn Greenwald has supported the campaign to brand writers and thinkers, such as neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris, as having “anti-Muslim animus” just for criticizing Islam.

 “These fellow travelers have made it increasingly unpleasant — and even dangerous — to discuss the link between Muslim violence and specific religious ideas, like jihad, martyrdom and blasphemy,” Harris tells me.

Bill Maher is shallow, Richard Dawkins is a buffoon, Glenn Greenwald is not a Muslim and everyone should watch this video to get a good laugh at Jay Smith, a person like Sam Harris.

She is repeating and she is incoherent and she is confused.

Noticing the beginnings of this trend in December 2007, a U.S. diplomat in Istanbul dispatched a cable to the National Security Council, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and various State Department offices. The cable said the OIC’s chief called supporters of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad “extremists of freedom of expression” and equated them with al-Qaeda.

The cue for her is that the world has moved far far beyond 2007. Did she just wake up?

 Most of the criticism takes place online, with anonymous bloggers targeting supposed Islamophobes. Not long after the cable, a network of bloggers launched LoonWatch, which goes after Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists and other Muslims. The bloggers have labeled Somali author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a born Muslim but now an atheist opponent of Islamic extremism, an “anti-Muslim crusader.” Robert Spencer, a critic of extremist Islam, has been called a “vicious hate preacher” and an “Internet sociopath.” The insults may look similar to Internet trolling and vitriolic comments you can find on any blog or news site. But they’re more coordinated, frightening and persistent.

 She is so outdated. May be this is an old article posted in 2015.
For the record Robert Spencer is an Islamophobe and Ayan Hirsi Ali has lost all currency in US.

 One prominent target of the honor brigade’s attacks was Charlie Hebdo, the French newspaper where several staffers were recently killed by Islamic extremists. According to some accounts, as the killers massacred cartoonists, they shouted: “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad.” The OIC denounced the killings, but in a 2012 report, it also condemned the magazine’s “Islamophobic satires.” Its then-secretary general, Ihsanoglu, said the magazine’s “history of attacking Muslim sentiments” was “an outrageous act of incitement and hatred and abuse of freedom of expression.”

Alright the article is really new for otherwise it will not capture the 2015 events.
But once OIC denounced the Charlie Hebdo killings then why fall back upon their 2012 report?

 

Intense Nostalgia

This sinner is in a state of extremely intense nostalgia.

This bout happened because of the little bit of cleaning work that yours truly took up at this blog. In this process I realized that many of the sites have disappeared. Many more have not been updated for long - even years. Two names of departed souls came to haunt my memories. The world is changing at a faster pace than a few years earlier but I do not have many of those co-travelers that I had a few years earlier. This last one perhaps is the main cause of intense longings for the past.

On Existential Crisis

I shall begin with the Islamic solution to existentialist crisis.
Supplication is an essential part of Islam.
Wise people have told us that we should start by supplicating first of all for ourselves then the closest people to us and then move on to near and dear ones and then neighbours and local society and then to global Muslim Ummah and the world in general.
Of course it is understood that when you supplicate in above manner your actions will be in consonance with the same.
And therein lies the solution to the existentialist problems.
Pragmatic people do not face existential problems.
Idealist people do.
Indeed an external solution to any existentialist problems is to create an emergency in the life of such a person that requires immediate and practical attention - another mundane crisis.
I once requested my teacher professor MSZ Chaghtai to explain existentialism to me. I had tried to get a perspective on the issue through his books but to no avail. He jumped back and forth from literature and philosophy and then concluded that you do not get it either this way or that way.
In person he told that today this is not an issue that gets much attention because terrorism and the things like that have become more urgent issues.

In conclusion existentialist issue is the confusion of an idealist about life choices. The solution is that most of the time there is no ideal choice. Pragmatism is always the solution.

Midlife crisis, seven year itch and the notions like are manifestations of the same problem.

The excessive selfish disposition that so many people adopt after going through above phases is the other side of the coin. Moderation is the Islamic way of life and the solution to this side affect of the solution called selfishness.

Dostoevsky Question

According to Mr Justice M. Katju Dostoevsky asked how can there be a God when many innocent children suffer of hunger, cold, beatings and deprivations ?

Hunger : God made this world an examination, a trial. Hunger is a trial and some times it does affect children. In Islamic theology children dying in tender age will not only go to heaven themselves but they will also take their parents there. There is pain and there is reward. When we know the pain we also got to believe in the reward. That is the positive attitude in this case.

Cold: Similar considerations as above.

Beatings: In this case the person doing the beating takes the blame and he will pay for it in the hereafter. If there is crime then there is punishment also in hereafter. God is just.

Deprivations: If the deprivation is caused by man then man will be punished for it. If the deprivation is from God then He will reward the deprived person.

Ustadh Ali Ataie's Choice

Some of my favorites:
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
American Fascism by Chris Hedges
When Atheism Becomes Religion by Chris Hedges
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Orientalism by Edward Said
Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection by Sherman Jackson
Scattered Pictures by Zaid Shakir
Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire by Hamid Dabashi
Muhammad at Mecca/Muhammad at Medina by W. Montgomery Watt
Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders by Denise Spellberg
The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium by Walter Wink
Reel Bad Arabs by Jack Shaheen
The American Empire and the Fourth World by Anthony J. Hall
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William R. Shirer
Body of Secrets by James Bamford
The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11 by David Ray Griffin
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael Ruppert
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Tarpley
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence by M. Steven Fish
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood
Civilization on Trial by Arnold Toynbee
1984 by George Orwell
Questioning the War on Terror by Kevin Barrett
Evangelii Gaudium by Pope Francis I
The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska by John De Camp
Rabbit Hole: A Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivor’s Story by David Shurter

Pain of a Blogger

Many of the people in my blog list have not posted for a long time.

Clearly Lord Most high has made His presence felt.

And one of the bloggers, Dr Malih Ahmed Siddiqui, is no more in this world.

It is strange that even a platonic relationship like that of the internet can leave so much of pain in the heart.

Pain of Indian Muslims

Justice M. Katju wrote a status on his Facebook account in which he raised a question whether constitution of India has become outdated.

This sinner wrote a comment there. My contention is the following. In last 67 years India has been less than fair to its huge minority - the Muslims. This piece of reality must be included in any palling about future of India.

Fear of Loss

You fear the loss of what you have.

You fear the loss of your material possessions.
You fear the loss of your emotional possessions.
You fear the loss of your spiritual possessions.

Only the last one is worth worrying about.

First one you should not fear - even if you run the risk of turning a rikshaw puller in Kolkata from a royal in Delhi. (We do have an example of Mughal family doing that in Kolkata.)

Your close people ditching you should not also bother you.
Though its effect will be much more severe than the material loss mentioned earlier. Emotional relations too are worldly. On the judgment day a mother shall be running away from her children. That is a terrible thing but the truth remains that emotional relations in the world may become useless at the end of the day.

Spiritual relations fall into a different category.
Reserve your most serious fears for them.

Nobody is Bad at Heart

I am sorry that is not true.

There are people who are bad at heart.
And then there are people who are very bad.

That is life.

Combine this piece of reality with another wisdom from wise people - hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Something in Urdu

Aye aab-e-rood-e-ganga kya toone us waqt ko faramosh kar diya jab khuda shanason, ahl-e-ilm aur ahl-e-dil ke karvan tere kinare utre aur is sarzameen ki fazaoon mein deen-e-haq ki pardah kushayee ki? Haq ki sada se methee kaun si sada ho sakti hai? Malik aur Khaliq ke kalaam se behtar kaun see guftgoo ho sakti hai? Us Rahman-o-Raheem ke parastaron ke sath phir ye berukhi kyun? Unse itni adawat kyun? Kya apne dil-o-jigar ko tatol kar nahin dekha ki Muhammed (SAW) ke shaidayee tumhari us amanat ko baghair kisi tarmeem ke tum tak le aaye? Hamari kavish ka gar koyee pas nahin to na sahi magar apni is amanat se is qadar bezari kyun? Qasam hai us zaat ki jis ke qbze mein hamari janein hain humein apni is sayee ki tumse koyee ujrat nahi chahiye magar khudara is saugat ko sanbhalo jis se qeemti koi shai parvardigar ne nahi banayee. Badi door se aye huway logon ka ye tohfa muhabbat ka tohfa hai. Aur agar phir bhi tumhein is se inkar hai to phir humein apni zimmedari se farigh kar dijiye. Hum apni auqat ke mutabiq khair khwah hain aur apne eeman ke mutabiq mukhlis. Is khudayee eenam ko thukrana bade khasare ki baat hai.

To Brother Aijaz Zaka Syed, With Love

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a gulf based journalist of Hyderabadi origin.

He has written a personal column about loneliness away from home and problems of Ummah.

This sinner feels a very large degree of consonance with his ideas.
Particularly when nearly every single modern educated Muslim wears the Macaulian robe shamelessly his writings are very reassuring.

But first a few words about Thomas Babbington Macaulay.
He was a British educationist and his use of English language has few parallels.
He was the person who theorized that British should impart such education to Indians that will make them British in thinking in spite of their dark skin.
And hence they will do the dirty job for the British.

While the British were in India not many Indians were fooled by this trickery.
Once they left nearly every modern educated India fell into that hideous trap.
They continue to do so. Especially Muslims. Including the Muslims of Pakistan.

And if you hear voices like that of Aijaz Zaka Syed in the midst of this unbroken Macaulian spell then it feels like a breeze.

Coming back to his loneliness. Well sacrifice is an integral part of a Muslim's life. But he tries to drown it in his concern for Ummah.

And that is what a believer is supposed to do.

In different corners of the world there will be Muslims who will appreciate these sacrifices and that can rightfully be taken as the harbinger of the good things in the hereafter.

Calligraphy by Naim Ahmed Sabri, Hyderabad

Dear Abdul Hafiz Gandhi

I wrote the following on Abdul Hafiz Gandhi's Facebook page:


Dear AH, 

(1) I shall watch the documentary later but I have a few general comments, not in the context of this video.

 (2) I can see that you are seriously working on a political career. (3) My good wishes are with you. 

(4) Though it will be preposterous to claim statesmanship but that is what you should strive for. 

(5) Do strive for leadership - we need leaders. 

(6) I am talking as a Muslim and for Muslims. (7) My suggestion and request and recommendation is that you work towards becoming a leader of Muslims.

 (8) I affirm that it is perfectly legitimate to strive to become a national leader and as an individual my good wishes will be still with you. 

(9) By a national leader I mean a person who primarily thinks of the nation as a whole. 

(10) We have often heard that Muslims of India lack a leadership. I concur with that sentiment. That is why I request you to make Muslims your primary focus. 

(11) During about seven decades of independence Muslims of India, easily numbering any where from 20 to 25 crore, have been socially, culturally, economically and otherwise marginalized both by acts of omission as well as commission. 

(12) It will not be a communal act at all to focus upon this in justice but there will be enough people who might try to stick that label on you if you do take up that line of action. 

(13) Such accusation will have to be addressed and luckily they can be addressed. 

 (14) Democracy by default may end up marginalizing minorities. It by definition is prone to that. 

(15) That is what has happened to Muslims of India. 

(16) This is a serious problem. 

(17) We all know this much. 

 (18) This problem has to be addressed. 

(19) This needs serious hard work to work out a solution to this problem. 

(20) We need people to work on this problem. 

(21) we need people in all fields of life to address this problem.

 (22) We need people in politics to focus on this problem. 

(23) For a politician this is a good and reasonable objective to focus on the problem mentioned above. 

(24) It is absolutely constitutional.

 (25) In short aw well as long term career this should be a very rewarding decision to make this as a life long mission. 

(26) Nothing happens on its own at least when we are talking about our responsibilities.

 (27) We Muslims of India have to take care of our political, economic, social, cultural, economic, business and industrial interests. 

(28) Some body has to do it. 

(29) many people are required to do the needful - Muslim community is huge. 

(30) We need many leaders as well as a leader.

 (31) You can strive for the former as well as the latter. 

(32) Let us be clear about one thing - the country will not take care of our interests on its own. 

(33) Whether we like it or not injustice might take place both by acts of omission as well as commission. Let us not fool ourselves. 

(34) This is not an argument to distrust our brothers - we must always be thankful to those who are aware of our problems and have been considerate as well as mindful of our problems. 

(35) You are in JNU and that has a mighty ideology. 

(36) Allah (SWT) is almighty and you are His slave. And that is a honour as well as a protection as well as a duty. I am sure your environment will not overwhelm you and at the end you will remain an ambassador of Islam and Muslims in that environment. And I expect that you shall present yourself as a flag bearer of a way of life that is complete. 

(37) And that is perfectly constitutional. 

(38) I am sure Allah (SWT) shall reward you amply both in this world as well a in the hereafter. 

(39) Every political party has some Muslim faces. As an Alig and as a Muslim I shall be pained if you too end up merely as a Muslim face in some party. We need real leaders as well as well wishers of Ummah in our political system in India. 

(40) and that is perfectly constitutional. And I suppose for the time being I have said a lot.

Tempo is High

Moments ago the chants of Tempo is High filtered into my room from the the window.

It means that some sort of activity for union elections was in action.
That is sad.
AMU is an academic institution and that is how it should be.
Union activity here simply takes over every other activity.
It defeats the whole purpose of an academic institution.
It is neither good for the university nor for the Aligarh Movement.

May I suggest the following? Those who concur with my above view should challenge the union supporters for an open debate. Yours truly would like to join you.

Student's union is no more a blessing for the university and we should take note of it and do away with it.

Academic benefit from AMU is the only legitimate benefit.
We should expose and isolate those who intend do derive other kind of benefits from the university that are not legitimate.

Any takers?

My Favourite Story

This story was recounted by Prof. Khalid Al-Jubeir, consulting cardiovascular surgeon, in one of his lectures:

Once I operated on a two and a half year old child. It was Tuesday, and on Wednesday the child was in good health. On Thursday at 11:15 am – and I’ll never forget the time because of the shock I experienced – one of the nurses informed me that the heart and breathing of the child had stopped. I hurried to the child and performed cardiac massage for 45 minutes and during that entire time the heart would not work.

Then, Allaah Almighty decreed for the heart to resume function and we thanked Him. I went to inform the child’s family about his condition. As you know, it is very difficult to inform the patient’s family about his/her condition when it’s bad. This is one of the most difficult situations a doctor is subjected to but it is necessary. So I looked for the child’s father whom I couldn’t find. Then I found his mother. I told her that the child’s cardiac arrest was due to bleeding in his throat; we don’t know the cause of this bleeding and fear that his brain is dead.

So how do you think she responded?

Did she cry?

Did she blame me?

No, nothing of the sort. Instead, she said “Alhamdulillah” (All Praise is due to Allaah) and left me.

After 10 days, the child started moving. We thanked Allaah Almighty and were happy that his brain condition was reasonable. After 12 days, the heart stopped again because of the same bleeding. We performed another cardiac massage for 45 minutes but this time his heart didn’t respond. I told his mother that there was no hope. So she said:

“Alhamdulillah. O Allaah! If there is good in his recovery, then cure him, O my Lord!”

With the grace of ALLAH, his heart started functioning again. He suffered six similar cardiac arrests till a trachea specialist was able to stop the bleeding and the heart started working properly. Now, three and a half months had passed and the child was recovering but did not move. Then just as he started moving, he was afflicted with a very large and strange pus-filled abscess in his head, the likes of which I had never seen. I informed his mother of the serious development. She said “Alhamdulillah” and left me.

We immediately turned him over to the surgical unit that deals with the brain and nervous system and they took over his treatment. Three weeks later, the boy recovered from this abscess but was still not moving. Two weeks pass and he suffers from a strange blood poisoning and his temperature reaches 41.2°C (106°F). I again informed his mother of the serious development and she said with patience and certainty:

“Alhamdulillah. O Allaah! If there is good in his recovery, then cure him.”

After seeing his mother who was with her child at Bed #5, I went to see another child at Bed #6. I found that child’s mother crying and screaming,

“Doctor! Doctor! Do something! The boy’s temperature reached 37.6°C (99.68°F)! He’s going to die! He’s going to die!”

I said with surprise, “Look at the mother of that child in Bed #5. Her child’s fever is over 41°C (106°F), yet she is patient and praises Allaah.” So she replied:

“That woman isn't conscious and has no senses”.

At that point, I remembered the great Hadith of the Prophet (Sallallaahu 'Alaihi Wa Sallam): “Blessed are the strangers.” Just two words… but indeed two words that shake a nation! In 23 years of hospital service, I have never seen the likes of this patient sister.

We continued to care for him. Now, six and a half months have passed and the boy finally came out of the recovery unit – not talking, not seeing, not hearing, not moving, not smiling, and with an open chest in which you can see his beating heart. The mother changed the dressing regularly and remained patient and hopeful. Do you know what happened after that? Before I inform you, what do you think are the prospects of a child who has passed through all these dangers, agonies, and diseases? And what do you expect this patient mother to do whose child is at the brink of the grave and who is unable to do anything except supplicate and beseech Allaah Almighty? Do you know what happened two and a half months later? The boy was completely cured by the mercy of Allaah and as a reward for this pious mother. He now races his mother with his feet as if nothing happened and he became sound and healthy as he was before.

The story doesn't end here. This is not what moved me and brought tears to my eyes.

What filled my eyes with tears is what follows:

One and a half years after the child left the hospital, one of the brothers from the Operations Unit informed me that a man, his wife and two children wanted to see me. I asked who they were and he replied that he didn’t know them. So I went to see them, and I found the parents of the same child whom I operated upon. He was now five years old and like a flower in good health – as if nothing happened to him. With them also was a four-month old newborn. I welcomed them kindly and then jokingly asked the father whether the newborn was the 13th or 14th child. He looked at me with an astonishing smile as if he pitied me. He then said,

“This is the second child, and the child upon whom you operated is our first born, bestowed upon us after 17 years of infertility. And after being granted that child, he was afflicted with the conditions that you've seen.”

At hearing this, I couldn't control myself and my eyes filled with tears. I then involuntarily grabbed the man by the arm, and pulling him to my room, asked him about his wife:

“Who is this wife of yours who after 17 years of infertility has this much patience with all the fatal conditions that afflict her first born?! Her heart cannot be barren! It must be fertile with Imaan!”

Do you know what he said? Listen carefully my dear brothers and sisters. He said,

“I have been married to this woman for 19 years and for all these years she has never missed the [late] night prayers except due to an authorized excuse. I have never witnessed her backbiting, gossiping, or lying. Whenever I leave home or return, she opens the door, supplicates for me, and receives me hospitably. And in everything she does, she demonstrates the utmost love, care, courtesy, and compassion.”

The man completed by saying,

“Indeed, doctor, because of all the noble manners and affection with which she treats me, I'm shy to lift up my eyes and look at her."

So I said to him: “And the likes of her truly deserve that from you.”


Source: EALIM

FaceBook Experience

Because of a compelling reason yours truly ended up at FaceBook.
And yours truly is feeling very awkward.
Being a private person it was never an ambition to be there.
And then yours truly never expected to know many people there.
That turned out to be wrong.
There are hoards of people there whom yours truly recognizes.
The truth of the matter is that yours truly can not deal with so many people.
There are several faces that yours truly does not want to be friends with.
Then there are faces who sent a surge of emotional tornadoes into heart.
It feels so blessing to have known so many people with so many worldly blessings.
People beautiful in worldly sense.
A friend with whom chemistry was unbelievably smooth.
A girl using the nickname this sinner gave to her.
Awkward former students trying to come out of their hesitations.
People with professional connection enjoying themselves.
Long lost family connections.
And the works.

But yours truly intends to be there for  a short period only.
Sunni Forum was the best at any rate.
Miss you all brothers and sisters.
But kindly be happy for this sinner also for getting the opportunity to connect with some missing pieces of life.
Supplications requested.
May Allah (SWT) grant you the best of the both worlds.
This sinner feels so blessed for knowing you all.