If we look at our lives at the highest level, what is our purpose?
I know its difficult, but if for a second I seperate myself from work, family, friends and all the little things that surround me, what am I left with.
Never crossed my mind before, but now it has.. so why are we really here, sure as hell its not to have the best house/car/partner or to gain self-satisfaction, be it out of love, money or whatever drives us to do what we do everyday.
As a Muslim, I know that this life is temporary and we are all being 'tested' to submit to the will of God and to fullfill the rights of our fellow beings.
That makes sense, however it often gets lost in the scramble of our lives. Therefore most of what we do on a daily basis has little or nothing to do with our 'Purpose in life'.
Maybe I'm going off on a totally new tangent, but at first it doesnt really make sense to me, you have a purpose, yet you dont really do much about it...hmmm
----------------------------------------------------------------
Side note, sometimes things like what I mentioned above is used to manipulate the minds of the illiterate to incite violence and promote 'extremism', that is just wrong. The whole 'extremist philosophy' is more political than anything else in my opinion. God never wants you to go out and hurt someone else, regardless of what they may do to you.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Karachi Beach!!!
In a recent article entitled "The battering of our beaches", Cowasjee documented the sad state of our beaches. Without hard and fast intervention, seems like the situation is going from bad to worse!
Here are some points from his article, I had no idea about:
"The city’s population is increasing by 500,000 a year. We need all our beaches to cater for increased recreational needs...Public access to the beach is integral to democracy and equality. Karachi is almost destitute of parks and playgrounds and open spaces. It has fewer acres of such spaces per 1,000 residents as compared to any major city in the developed world.
The city government has built two parallel parapets which hide the sea from public view. Parapets are normally hip-high as were the parapets built by Sir Jehangir Kothari in 1912, still standing for all to emulate. What our city government, obsessed with size, has built is head-high. Why? Could it be to enrich the brick makers and layers?
... And further folly from our MQM Minister for Ports & Shipping, Babar Ghauri. Whilst once in Jeddah on one of the many ‘official’ visits our ministers indulge in, he spotted a water jet spouting high into the air in front of the royal palaces. In search of glory, he ordered the Karachi Port Trust to have it replicated in Karachi’s sea, without bothering about how much it would cost to purchase, instal and operate.
Now to the real danger..."
I didn't want to post another HUGE article so I'm ending the cutting and pasting here. Expectedly, there is much more in his article that is worth reading. He touches on the bigger problems of the issue further on in his article, so if anyone is interested, here is where the article is!!!
Here are some points from his article, I had no idea about:
"The city’s population is increasing by 500,000 a year. We need all our beaches to cater for increased recreational needs...Public access to the beach is integral to democracy and equality. Karachi is almost destitute of parks and playgrounds and open spaces. It has fewer acres of such spaces per 1,000 residents as compared to any major city in the developed world.
The city government has built two parallel parapets which hide the sea from public view. Parapets are normally hip-high as were the parapets built by Sir Jehangir Kothari in 1912, still standing for all to emulate. What our city government, obsessed with size, has built is head-high. Why? Could it be to enrich the brick makers and layers?
... And further folly from our MQM Minister for Ports & Shipping, Babar Ghauri. Whilst once in Jeddah on one of the many ‘official’ visits our ministers indulge in, he spotted a water jet spouting high into the air in front of the royal palaces. In search of glory, he ordered the Karachi Port Trust to have it replicated in Karachi’s sea, without bothering about how much it would cost to purchase, instal and operate.
Now to the real danger..."
I didn't want to post another HUGE article so I'm ending the cutting and pasting here. Expectedly, there is much more in his article that is worth reading. He touches on the bigger problems of the issue further on in his article, so if anyone is interested, here is where the article is!!!
Friday, February 10, 2006
FYI...
ISRAEL PLANS TO BUILD 'MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE' ON MUSLIM GRAVES
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
09 February 2006
Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) "museum of tolerance" being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city's main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of "unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths".
Israeli archaeologists and developers have continued excavating the remains of people buried at the site - which was a cemetery for at least 1,000 years - despite a temporary ban on work granted by the Islamic Court, a division of Israel's justice system. Police have been taking legal advice on whether the order is legally binding. The Israeli High Court is to hear a separate case brought by the Al Aqsa Association of the Islamic Movement in Israel next week.
[This is from The Independent. The rest of the article can be found here]
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
09 February 2006
Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) "museum of tolerance" being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city's main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of "unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths".
Israeli archaeologists and developers have continued excavating the remains of people buried at the site - which was a cemetery for at least 1,000 years - despite a temporary ban on work granted by the Islamic Court, a division of Israel's justice system. Police have been taking legal advice on whether the order is legally binding. The Israeli High Court is to hear a separate case brought by the Al Aqsa Association of the Islamic Movement in Israel next week.
[This is from The Independent. The rest of the article can be found here]
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
FINALLY, some sense...
The following is an article about the DANISH CARTOONS. It's by Robert Fisk (a very intelligent and well-informed person). More of his writings on the Middle East can be found here.
(I know the article might be a bit 'long' for some but I totally thinks it's worth a read!)
---------------------------------------
Danish cartoons: provocative and perverse
By Robert Fisk
This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith.
SO now it’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, the Saudis and the Syrians complain, Gulf nations clear their shelves of Danish produce, Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union and foreign journalists.
In Denmark, Fleming Rose, the ‘culture’ editor of the pip-squeak newspaper which published these silly cartoons — last September, for heaven’s sake — announces that we are witnessing a “clash of civilizations” between secular western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the true tradition of Hans Christian Anderson. Oh lordy, lordy. What we’re witnessing is the childishness of civilizations.
So let’s start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea’s “long withdrawing roar.” That’s why we talk about ‘the West versus Islam’ rather than ‘Christians versus Islam’ — because there aren’t an awful lot of Christians left in Europe. There is no way we can get round this by setting up all the other world religions and asking why we are not allowed to make fun of the Prophet.
Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how more than a decade ago, a film called the Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young Frenchman. I also happen to remember a major US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled. “September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God’s sake, don’t ask why.” When I arrived, I found that the university authorities had deleted the phrase “for God’s sake” because “we didn’t want to offend certain sensibilities. Ah-ha, so we have ‘sensibilities’ too.
In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularists when it comes to free speech — or cheap cartoons — we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much. I also enjoyed the pompous claims of European statesmen that they cannot control free speech or newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had that cartoon of the Prophet shown instead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped hat, we would have had “anti-semitism” screamed into our ears — and rightly so — just as we often hear the Israelis complain about anti-semitic cartoons in Egyptian newspapers.
Furthermore, in some European nations — France is one, Germany and Austria are among the others — it is forbidden by law to deny acts of genocide. In France, for example, it is illegal to say that the Jewish Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust did not happen (wait for Turkey’s problems over the latter if it ever gets into the EU). So it is in fact impermissible to make certain statements in European nations. I’m still uncertain whether these laws attain their objectives: however much you may prescribe Holocaust denial, anti-semites will always try to find a way round.
The point, however, is that we can hardly exercise our political restraints or laws to prevent anti-semitic cartoons or Holocaust deniers and then start screaming about secularism when we find that Muslims object to our provocative and insulting image of the Prophet.
For many Muslims, the ‘Islamic’ reaction to this whole squalid affair is an embarrassment. There is perfectly good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue — if it allowed for a serious dialogue and no one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction. And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntington garbage about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that’s what happens when you topple dictators).
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of ‘Palestine’. There’s a message here, isn’t there? That America’s policies and ‘regime change’ and ‘democracy’ in the Middle East — are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them. For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous indeed.
In any event, it’s not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Quran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so? —(c) The Independent
(I know the article might be a bit 'long' for some but I totally thinks it's worth a read!)
---------------------------------------
Danish cartoons: provocative and perverse
By Robert Fisk
This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith.
SO now it’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, the Saudis and the Syrians complain, Gulf nations clear their shelves of Danish produce, Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union and foreign journalists.
In Denmark, Fleming Rose, the ‘culture’ editor of the pip-squeak newspaper which published these silly cartoons — last September, for heaven’s sake — announces that we are witnessing a “clash of civilizations” between secular western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the true tradition of Hans Christian Anderson. Oh lordy, lordy. What we’re witnessing is the childishness of civilizations.
So let’s start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea’s “long withdrawing roar.” That’s why we talk about ‘the West versus Islam’ rather than ‘Christians versus Islam’ — because there aren’t an awful lot of Christians left in Europe. There is no way we can get round this by setting up all the other world religions and asking why we are not allowed to make fun of the Prophet.
Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how more than a decade ago, a film called the Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young Frenchman. I also happen to remember a major US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled. “September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God’s sake, don’t ask why.” When I arrived, I found that the university authorities had deleted the phrase “for God’s sake” because “we didn’t want to offend certain sensibilities. Ah-ha, so we have ‘sensibilities’ too.
In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularists when it comes to free speech — or cheap cartoons — we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much. I also enjoyed the pompous claims of European statesmen that they cannot control free speech or newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had that cartoon of the Prophet shown instead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped hat, we would have had “anti-semitism” screamed into our ears — and rightly so — just as we often hear the Israelis complain about anti-semitic cartoons in Egyptian newspapers.
Furthermore, in some European nations — France is one, Germany and Austria are among the others — it is forbidden by law to deny acts of genocide. In France, for example, it is illegal to say that the Jewish Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust did not happen (wait for Turkey’s problems over the latter if it ever gets into the EU). So it is in fact impermissible to make certain statements in European nations. I’m still uncertain whether these laws attain their objectives: however much you may prescribe Holocaust denial, anti-semites will always try to find a way round.
The point, however, is that we can hardly exercise our political restraints or laws to prevent anti-semitic cartoons or Holocaust deniers and then start screaming about secularism when we find that Muslims object to our provocative and insulting image of the Prophet.
For many Muslims, the ‘Islamic’ reaction to this whole squalid affair is an embarrassment. There is perfectly good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue — if it allowed for a serious dialogue and no one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction. And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntington garbage about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that’s what happens when you topple dictators).
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of ‘Palestine’. There’s a message here, isn’t there? That America’s policies and ‘regime change’ and ‘democracy’ in the Middle East — are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them. For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous indeed.
In any event, it’s not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Quran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so? —(c) The Independent
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Dimaagh Kharab
Our society is full of double standards, whereby everyone has a set of rules for themselves and another one to judge everyone else with. If you think about it, its a norm, and you generally just tend to accept it with time.
Why it is so...well here's AP's response ( please remember that i'm not the smarter one in this duo)
ALi says:
not really...the question is..why do we have them, and why are they socially accepted without question
AP says:
why we have them, i think, is a psycho-social question
AP says:
why they're socially accepted without question is simply b/c thats how everyone is..its the norm; it perpetuates itself.....u pass on the standard to ure kids and they pass it on and so on....
btw, if youre now thinking where this post is supposed to make sense, it really isnt..its just random rambling..
I need to get back to blogging, because i've put it off so much that its become a challenging task for me, procrastination always gets the better of me.
tomorrow,
[an]
Why it is so...well here's AP's response ( please remember that i'm not the smarter one in this duo)
ALi says:
not really...the question is..why do we have them, and why are they socially accepted without question
AP says:
why we have them, i think, is a psycho-social question
AP says:
why they're socially accepted without question is simply b/c thats how everyone is..its the norm; it perpetuates itself.....u pass on the standard to ure kids and they pass it on and so on....
btw, if youre now thinking where this post is supposed to make sense, it really isnt..its just random rambling..
I need to get back to blogging, because i've put it off so much that its become a challenging task for me, procrastination always gets the better of me.
tomorrow,
[an]
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Dog Food for Famine Victims!
Below are excerpts from the an article entitled "New Zealand Food Help for Kenyans is for the Dogs" By Alexander Schwabe. The rest of the article can be found here.
-------------
"Kenya is suffering from an ongoing drought. What the young woman saw in Kenya disturbed her deeply. Upon her return to her hometown of North Canterbury in New Zealand, she told friends and family about the hunger in the eastern African country. Her stories were so heart-wrenching that a friend of her mother's, the dog-food manufacturer Christine Drummond, came up with the idea of sending 42 tons of powdered dog food to Kenya's famine victims.
Not surprisingly, the Kenyan government refused this offer. John Munyes, the Kenyan minister responsible for aid programs, said it was an insult to think his nation would accept animal food. Drummond had sought to avoid exactly this response. In order to demonstrate the sincerity of her offer, she promised that the dog food was very nutritious and actually quite tasty. She and her children, she said, mix it in with their breakfast cereal every morning.
In preparing to deliver the dog food, Drummond even developed a recipe that was tailored to the conditions in Kenya. "The first plan was to send dog biscuits, and change the vitamins," she told a Christchurch paper called The Press. "Then, when I heard there were so many little children, I couldn't send them a bicky."Instead, she developed a powder that could be mixed with water and turned into a meal. It was based primarily on corn, which is a major staple of the Kenyan diet, but also contained freeze-dried meat: beef, sheep, pork, chicken and venison. Also involved were clams, seaweed, garlic, eggs, cereals and flax.
The Kenyans were far from impressed. "The offer was very naïve and culturally insulting, given the meaning of dogs in our culture," said Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua. Drummond, he admitted, may have been trying to help, but her offer was "unacceptable."No one denies that Kenya's situation is desperate. An ongoing drought and failed harvests have led to 3.5 million people suffering from hunger. President Mwai Kibaki has announced a state of emergency. But the dog-food offer has generated shock and outrage. Zipporah Kittony, head of the Kenyan women's group Maendeleo ya Wanawake, called the offer the highest form of abuse which Kenyan women and children could be subjected to. Especially in times of drought, she said, children must be handled with dignity."
-------------
"Kenya is suffering from an ongoing drought. What the young woman saw in Kenya disturbed her deeply. Upon her return to her hometown of North Canterbury in New Zealand, she told friends and family about the hunger in the eastern African country. Her stories were so heart-wrenching that a friend of her mother's, the dog-food manufacturer Christine Drummond, came up with the idea of sending 42 tons of powdered dog food to Kenya's famine victims.
Not surprisingly, the Kenyan government refused this offer. John Munyes, the Kenyan minister responsible for aid programs, said it was an insult to think his nation would accept animal food. Drummond had sought to avoid exactly this response. In order to demonstrate the sincerity of her offer, she promised that the dog food was very nutritious and actually quite tasty. She and her children, she said, mix it in with their breakfast cereal every morning.
In preparing to deliver the dog food, Drummond even developed a recipe that was tailored to the conditions in Kenya. "The first plan was to send dog biscuits, and change the vitamins," she told a Christchurch paper called The Press. "Then, when I heard there were so many little children, I couldn't send them a bicky."Instead, she developed a powder that could be mixed with water and turned into a meal. It was based primarily on corn, which is a major staple of the Kenyan diet, but also contained freeze-dried meat: beef, sheep, pork, chicken and venison. Also involved were clams, seaweed, garlic, eggs, cereals and flax.
The Kenyans were far from impressed. "The offer was very naïve and culturally insulting, given the meaning of dogs in our culture," said Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua. Drummond, he admitted, may have been trying to help, but her offer was "unacceptable."No one denies that Kenya's situation is desperate. An ongoing drought and failed harvests have led to 3.5 million people suffering from hunger. President Mwai Kibaki has announced a state of emergency. But the dog-food offer has generated shock and outrage. Zipporah Kittony, head of the Kenyan women's group Maendeleo ya Wanawake, called the offer the highest form of abuse which Kenyan women and children could be subjected to. Especially in times of drought, she said, children must be handled with dignity."
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