Did your environment influence you and your political views?

[شمله ور خراساني]

I agree we can be proud Muslims we can pray a thousand times a day but we must be adopt secularism.

adopting secularism constitutes KUFR. If you remove the law of god from your society there is no use of praying 1000 times. Because abandoning rule of god is disbelief.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

But you promote Liberalism and other European ideologies. And you have justified it in the based based on the material accomplishment of the societies where those views are widely accepted. So therefore, we could assume that materialism is what defines your world view.

You cannot claim to be rational. You would fit the description of a materialist.

I'm not a materialist. I promote "Western" liberal democracy because according to my rationality and common sense and since we have tested all other systems in a systematic manner, the ideals of liberalism come across as our final answer. Don't believe, ask this Asian man:

As a student of political philosophy, you should at least know about Mr. Fukuyama.

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Of course I would want a system of liberal democracy with limited individual ownership of property, with a Welfare system, universal university education, a society based on reason rather than superstition and mysticism, etc, etc... That sort of stuff is absent from all modern Western democracies. The richest country in the world is home to the Bible Belt. Therefore, I do not wish to promote their ideology.

For me, justice, equality, freedom and transparency trump material gains. Of course, in a society where there are all of those, there would also be an equal/equitable distribution of resources and poverty wouldn't really be an issue, would it?

A rational person cannot be a proponent of any form of theocracy. A person who believes he is both rational and a supporter of such an ideology doesn't even understand how irrational he really is.

As I said before in different discussions, the Western modern and advanced societies have many things we can learn from. Their rule of law, governance, free market, education and the sciences are examples of things we can learn from them. And those are not necessarily contradictory to Islam.


I am all in favor of implementing all the positive aspects of Western societies that are not contradictory to Islam and are beneficial for our society.

We don't have to abandon our religion or act against the teachings of Islam to become developed and modern. We need education, skills and courage.

Sangar, you can already practice your religion without any major hindrance in the Netherlands, can you not? That's what secularism is - to you yours and unto me mine.

[akbarkhan]

Salam,

I am not too sure about you being a Zalmay yet, but by analyzing your mindset I certainly agree that you are a Levanaye.

In case of Afghanistan, your text book philosophy will not work, just like Mr. Fukuyama's much adhored PNAC! What remains of PNAC is flying debris, similar will the fate of secularism in Afghanistan!

Allah forbid, even Islam would have failed in Afghanistan was it not for commonalities between Pashtunwali and Islamic ethics! Secularism has no place in Afghanistan because Pashtunwali and Islam have so much in common that they are inseparable! Of course, we will always have a few astray sheep, who hasn't?

[Baygham]

the reason why allah made mankind is not because he wanted us to emulate rich wealthy countries of disbelievers.

Not only does Sangar wrore knows that a certain Allah built the universe, he also knows the purpose of his labor. It is to follow the doctrines of Sheikh Wahab, who was only born a few hundred years ago. So God built the universe, than waited a few zillion years, till he got it right in making Sheikh Wahab and finally once that was accomplished revealed his purpose to humanity. No matter how many times I repeat that I fail to convince myself of anything.

Many questions come to mind:
Well Sangar wrora we dont know if Allah built anything let alone proclaim that the Allah the wahabis point to built the whole universe.
What about our forefathers 300 years ago or for that matter 50 years ago when they did not have the fortune of Wahabi God communication link established.
In the absence of a direct communication with Allah, we have to rely on certain mullahs to tell me why he went into all the trouble of making everything.



I like this preoccupation with Allah and Muhammad as an answer to everything fascinating. Having grown in Pakhtunkhwa in a very conservative family I have seen the internal dynamics that leads one to accept guidance from both cultural and religious perspective. Similarly have spent a long time in the west, being friends with and mingled with people of all different backgrounds, there is one thing I am sure off. We are all the same, we have the same fears, the same mechanisms of sorrow, grief, happiness, joy.

In our day to day life we feel anxiety, fear making us run away or hide from one thing, joy makes us either seek or run towards something else.

Is it possible that whatever our faith, that is all we are doing.

[Baygham]

Baygham, I agree with you but what is the purpose of life if you lack faith?

The purpose of life is to live.

Faith is just one aspect of living. To Curb the anxiety and sometimes fear from unknown holes in our intellect and gloss them over with a soothing balm. Well it surely does accomplish that very well but the price we pay sometimes for that luxury is way too much. In todays world such states of the mind can be achieved with a little knowledge and effort for far less.

[Baygham]

Ever heard of the quote, "Its better to believe and find out he does not exist, than to not believe and find out he does exist?"


Would you agree that at times you feel guilty for such paradoxical thinking?

Thats a very weak position to take. Means the fear and worry is still active. The anxiety still needs to be quenched. I am not saying that it is somehow not allowed if you fabricate some elaborate scheme to quench anxiety or outright fear. We do that all the time. Science is an off shoot of such endeavors. All I am saying that whatever you fabricate, do it with full understanding and with knowledge of what price you are paying for it.

A father in pakhtunkhwa Town of Mardan, with florid PTSD with flashbacks of his women folk been raped and honor looted became so overwhelmed with the prospect of this happening to his daughter that he killed her. She was only 3 years old. Normally in PTSD you have experienced such voilence, in his case he hadnt, just heard cultural references of morality from mullah and his peers. Still the visions were severe, the outcome literally fatal.

Off course the environment shapes our views, political, religious, moral and otherwise.
'neesthi chi booneeri shi, mullah dha hashnaghar shee' (when poverty hits new lows in buner, a new mullah hashnaghar is born- Ghani Khan)

People say our folk are not educated and thus we are in so much pain. I disagree, we have maladaptive behaviors in response to anxiety and fear that are culturally and religiously produced in an over exaggerated fashion.

As a proud warrior (and at times ruthless) nation we have learned to culturally subjugate fear and worry in the field of war, but have no such skills against other mundane matters with disproprotionate responses that nobody else in the world understands and cause us tremendous suffering. Honor killing, female lack of education and oppurtunity, lack of healthy heterosexual relations, commercial and bussiness irregularities, corruption, deciet and so on.

[Baygham]

So if I understand you correctly you advocate for secularism and a separation of state and church? I am curious to know your biggest reason for thinking Islamic law is not suitable.

Islamic law has many problems, ignoring the most obvious problem that it is a grand fabrication, but for the sake of an argument let’s ignore that piece of information.

1. Whose Islamic law. Just on this forum you have many 'daweedars'. Momin (a misnomer if there ever was one) will say that the British paid and sponsored Ghulam Qadian's version is to be implemented. Sangar will pull his topak for the Saudi backed Wahabi version to keep his sponsors happy and 'roozgar' intact. Ironically the same British sponsored the wahabis at the same time they sponsored the qadianis in a different region of the raj, this time for disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, but that is another story. Well the 'grave worshippers' as sangar calls the rest of us will forward, our 'pir baba' version. We have not even gone to the Sunni - Shia side of things. On the other thread we have a Koranist, whom sangar calls a 'pervezi' pushing another version of PanIslamic toxicity. Not to forget contradictory hadith, even the quran has never stood a scholarly review with cost-benefit ratio after its implementation likely below zero. In short there is no Islamic law, just many versions which are all contradictory and very divisive.

2. Imagine we do get every one to conform to a standard version, with some coersion, some killing, some deciet, like the Saudis or the iranians did in safavids time by converting everyone to shia. Well lets imagine that turns out to be mullah omars version. Well we all know where it goes from there.

3. The only Islam that can work is the one in your heart, which is not practiced in government run public places. This allows different versions to coexist and one can form a multi-ethnic and multi-centric society - a need for a harnomious society that can then focus on living on earth and not in heaven.