Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness

[BarakzaiAbdali]

salaam wrora jaana,

I do not think Dr Najib should have been killed by foreigners. If anything, Afghans should have killed him.

Moreover, I think near the end of his life, the last couple of years, he realized his mistakes.

He was human after all.

Wasalaam,

Wrong, wror, his editorial in the New York times revealed he was like a hopping flea parasite/man prostitute. Moscow rail roaded him for losing their war and so he begged the very people that humiliated him to help him brutalize his people some more. His actions gave rise to the very radical environment that created the subsequent stark Afghan contrasts.

[Toramana]

By the way there is no doubt that Ghazali was a major retarding, degenerative, and stagnating influence on the intellectual development of the Muslim World. No other Muslim religious person has had as much a negative impact on Muslim societies as Ghazali although hardcore cut-throat Islamists like Barakzai might be having reverence for him.

[Tamim]

Wasalaam,

Wrong, wror, his editorial in the New York times revealed he was like a hopping flea parasite/man prostitute. Moscow rail roaded him for losing their war and so he begged the very people that humiliated him to help him brutalize his people some more. His actions gave rise to the very radical environment that created the subsequent stark Afghan contrasts.

That I did not know.

I thought he separated himself from the USSR, and I thought the Soviets lost the war because of money problems and outdated technology; and I though he was trying to bring all warring factions together for peace. He knew where Afghanistan would head towards as soon as the Mujahiddin started internal fighting for power.

Could you kindly share more information. Manana!

[BarakzaiAbdali]

That I did not know.

I thought he separated himself from the USSR, and I thought the Soviets lost the war because of money problems and outdated technology; and I though he was trying to bring all warring factions together for peace. He knew where Afghanistan would head towards as soon as the Mujahiddin started internal fighting for power.

Could you kindly share more information. Manana!

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/10/wo...ant-islam.html

The son of a b-itch went from egging Spiro Agnew's car to basically performing a belly dance for his adversary:

The Afghan President's praise for the United States and his attempt to enlist Washington in common cause against fundamentalism marked the sharpest departure yet from the open hostility that has characterized relations between Kabul and Washington since Afghanistan's leftist coup of 1978.

On the one hand his stupid a-ss reforms and supervised murders hardened the resistance and radicalized the country side as in times of war such things are bound to happen, and then he refused to leave and clung to power, and then on the other he started to offer himself as a roaming jiggalo to the very people he claimed were his adversaries.

His moronic supporters say he was like a Prophet, predicting all that came after. B-ulls-hit - he caused with his own policies and planted the seeds for everything that came after so it was not rocket science to see what the outcome would be

[Tamim]

TFS.

I fail to see what he did wrong? I guess his mistake was to show his cards and with that the American realized their next move?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

TFS.

I fail to see what he did wrong? I guess his mistake was to show his cards and with that the American realized their next move?

He did a tremendous amount wrong.

A. He did not take any iota of responsibility of his own actions in creating the mess he and the country was in

B. He proved a huge hypocrite. On the one hand as a youth he argued for socialist marxist systems and even was a part of implementing idiotic land reforms and ideo-religious "reforms-purges."

Then on the other hand he appealed to his ideological foe (US) that had vanquished him that had viewpoints and social structures in diametric opposition to what he claimed to stand for (hence the term prostituting).

C. He murdered people personally according to monitoring groups interviewing jailed people from that era

D. He labels the victims who radicalized ala his policies as the aggressors.

The appeal is a bold faced crawl in the mud for a person who tried to be a chameleon (e.g. dropping ullah in the KHAD period and then emphasizing it when he realized he was in a stalemate)

[Tamim]

He did a tremendous amount wrong.

A. He did not take any iota of responsibility of his own actions in creating the mess he and the country was in

B. He proved a huge hypocrite. On the one hand as a youth he argued for socialist marxist systems and even was a part of implementing idiotic land reforms and ideo-religious "reforms-purges."

Then on the other hand he appealed to his ideological foe (US) that had vanquished him that had viewpoints and social structures in diametric opposition to what he claimed to stand for (hence the term prostituting).

C. He murdered people personally according to monitoring groups interviewing jailed people from that era

D. He labels the victims who radicalized ala his policies as the aggressors.

The appeal is a bold faced crawl in the mud for a person who tried to be a chameleon (e.g. dropping ullah in the KHAD period and then emphasizing it when he realized he was in a stalemate)

A. He tried to mend the country towards unity. I guess this is out of realizing mistakes.
B. People's thinking change. Young blood is different than old blood.
C. Secret Service has to be brutal and he signed up for that, I guess. Not that I condone his actions.
D. Politics is a dirty game.

I do appreciate the hatred for him. However, he has long passed now, and Allah does not function on Pashtunwali.

Also, seeing today's problems and the situation we are in, we can see that Afghanistan went through a lot at the hands of Islamists.

Islamists have shown how kind Najib was; their brutal ways have surpassed Najib's.

We were almost at the brink of war, again, only for securing power.

Today, we are a divided nation. A nation where non-Pashtun want division, even if they have to side with an Islamist Tajik.

Once they divide the land, then they will try to get rid of the Islamists and create another division among the Tajik culturalists and Islamists.

This is the game of politics.

I still believe, deep inside, that he asked for forgiveness.

Wallahu 'alam bissawaab!

[BarakzaiAbdali]

A. He tried to mend the country towards unity. I guess this is out of realizing mistakes.
B. People's thinking change. Young blood is different than old blood.
C. Secret Service has to be brutal and he signed up for that, I guess. Not that I condone his actions.
D. Politics is a dirty game.

I do appreciate the hatred for him. However, he has long passed now, and Allah does not function on Pashtunwali.

Also, seeing today's problems and the situation we are in, we can see that Afghanistan went through a lot at the hands of Islamists.

Islamists have shown how kind Najib was; their brutal ways have surpassed Najib's.

We were almost at the brink of war, again, only for securing power.

Today, we are a divided nation. A nation where non-Pashtun want division, even if they have to side with an Islamist Tajik.

Once they divide the land, then they will try to get rid of the Islamists and create another division among the Tajik culturalists and Islamists.

This is the game of politics.

I still believe, deep inside, that he asked for forgiveness.

Wallahu 'alam bissawaab!

Incorrect. In a feudal agrarian society when war is imposed, the society radicalizes and takes refuge in concepts that sustain, comfort, and propel resistance. The Islamists were left to clean up the mess Najib created when he basically jarred the natural order of the agrarian/tribal/khan centric country side. We have seen this phenomena before even in the era of Abdullah Achakzai and the British War logs referring to the "Ghazis" and the "Talib-ul-ilm." In Kandahar he had his dog Ismat Muslim murder many leaders and elders.

The rest of the blame goes to people like Karzai et al who wore gucci and sat in the back while the Islamists did the heavy lifting. A true Alexandrian leader leads from the front so that his men, in all their differences, unite over their leader. This is why Alexander's men followed him into battle when they saw their own leader getting an arrow in the leg in our regions.

Put the blame where it belongs dear Sir. The average people responding to war is not the same as those given the huge responsibility to lead the people properly.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

A. He tried to mend the country towards unity. I guess this is out of realizing mistakes.
B. People's thinking change. Young blood is different than old blood.
C. Secret Service has to be brutal and he signed up for that, I guess. Not that I condone his actions.
D. Politics is a dirty game.

I do appreciate the hatred for him. However, he has long passed now, and Allah does not function on Pashtunwali.

Also, seeing today's problems and the situation we are in, we can see that Afghanistan went through a lot at the hands of Islamists.

Islamists have shown how kind Najib was; their brutal ways have surpassed Najib's.

We were almost at the brink of war, again, only for securing power.

Today, we are a divided nation. A nation where non-Pashtun want division, even if they have to side with an Islamist Tajik.

Once they divide the land, then they will try to get rid of the Islamists and create another division among the Tajik culturalists and Islamists.

This is the game of politics.

I still believe, deep inside, that he asked for forgiveness.

Wallahu 'alam bissawaab!

PS. regarding B, Najib's blood did not change. He would go on to tell the united nations dignitary that he had no qualms about the brutality he inflicted because he somehow "knew better." That is not a conciliatory tone or the words of a man that has learned the errors of his way.

Karzai is much the same sort of human trash. He talks human rights, and dignity and then in one interview talked about how even though the Talibs bought order they did not bring rights, dignity, education etc.

Then in his exist interview when the reporter asked him about AbdurRazzaq the murderer he installed he got upset and said out of his flatus emitting mouth "whhhhhhat did he not brrrriiiiing stability?"

So on the one hand Hamida Karzai Bibi decried stability devoid of rights but when its his piece of crap AbdurRazzaq (who has killed many many innocent Noorzai by the way) - then his brand of stability is right?

[Tamim]

Put the blame where it belongs dear Sir. The average people responding to war is not the same as those given the huge responsibility to lead the people properly.

Leaders derive their power from the people.

My approach, as you can see, is an Islamic approach. I am trying to stay as close to the sunnah of the Prophet (saw) as possible.

Forgiveness is the only thing that a society will use to turn a new leaf.

When you admit fault, then the next step is easy.

The Quran is filled with prayers of forgiveness.

People choose their positions based on their vision of politics. Only in the end, when they tasted victory, defeat, friends and foes, they realize: that the life of this world is but a sport.

The Prophet (saw) was patient with people because he knew that Allah has created different people with different philosophies to life. Islam came to instill in them that whatever you do, keep taqwah in mind. It will force you to do the right thing.

I do not think that Najib had an Islamic philosophy despite having a good Islamic background. So, I'm sure he can be forgiven.

Others who claim Islamic supremacy, have given Islam an international name: a religion of terror.

ps

I hope you are not taking offense to my rebuttals and posts.

[Khostai]

Incorrect. Its because I derive joy from it.

Ow oke, have fun than.

[Herat]

By the way there is no doubt that Ghazali was a major retarding, degenerative, and stagnating influence on the intellectual development of the Muslim World. No other Muslim religious person has had as much a negative impact on Muslim societies as Ghazali although hardcore cut-throat Islamists like Barakzai might be having reverence for him.

He does seem to have a point on totalitarianism -of which many forms of Islam are examples of but there does indeed exist just as many secular forms, Najibs murderous reign was such- and some of you place far too much emphasis on long forgotten historical folk that frankly I don't think most Muslims are aware of. While we're speaking of communism and communists, virtually all economists (bar the few remaining ideological maniacs) these days agree that a "command economy", of which communism is a variant, is a lost cause, and they give you all sorts of convoluted explanations for why, but I prefer, in the spirit of Occam's razor that is an essential part of the scientific method, the very simple, parsimonious explanation: it is extremely difficult to control the natural behavioural patterns of a population (except it seems but even then to a limited extent, by manipulating voluntary incentives). Aside from the moral issue, I think the same simple principle underlies the inherent failure of totalitarian forms of social engineering, especially with regard to religion (which has in fact made a significant come-back in both the Christian and Muslim Soviet bloc states).

In fact, there is very direct evidence for this: behavioural genetics has now established without a doubt that religiosity is partially genetically determined and that there is average variation in religiosity between individuals that can be attributed to genes -just as we would expect from evolutionary theory. The exact quantification of the variation in religiosity that can be attributed to the genes depends on which identical twin study you look at (this is the golden standard with behavioural genetics at the moment: you look at those rare identical twins reared apart and compare them to twins reared together or make similar comparisons with fraternal twins and other combinations of varying genetic relatedness), Ive seen as low as around 10% and as high as 40% - the trouble is that these studies use different measures to quantify "religiosity", from simple belief in supernatural agents to actual religious participation, with the later yielding higher heritability scores. I personally think these studies all underestimate the true extent of the genetic influence on religiosity since the twin samples come from the developed world where living standards are high -we make the trivial observation that religion strongly correlates with economic destitution- so that that confounding general ecological factor has not been taken into account. And the higher heritability does seem necessary to explain the universality of religion throughout human history.
http://www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/biolog...her-twin-study
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=twin+studies+religiosity

Now we obviously can't do anything about the genetic factor in religion -the ultimate upshot of which is that religion will always exist, self-deceptive (per Robert Trivers, "religion is a recipe for self-deception") William Lane Craig's will unfortunately always exist - but the other factor is environmental/ecological and therein lies the true rooting of the statistical phenomenon of social secularization that seems to inevitably accompany existential security (I discussed this in that other thread on secularization).

Speaking of "evidence", let me also take this opportunity to introduce you guys to the relatively most new and most powerful paradigm of evidence against creationism -as if it hadn't reached the status of flat-earth already: the rapidly burgeoning field of evolutionary genetics, including human evolutionary genetics.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...ary%20genetics

Still not a shred of "evidence" for Islam, sorry, I mean creationism; the very opposite in fact.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Leaders derive their power from the people.

My approach, as you can see, is an Islamic approach. I am trying to stay as close to the sunnah of the Prophet (saw) as possible.

Forgiveness is the only thing that a society will use to turn a new leaf.

When you admit fault, then the next step is easy.

The Quran is filled with prayers of forgiveness.

People choose their positions based on their vision of politics. Only in the end, when they tasted victory, defeat, friends and foes, they realize: that the life of this world is but a sport.

The Prophet (saw) was patient with people because he knew that Allah has created different people with different philosophies to life. Islam came to instill in them that whatever you do, keep taqwah in mind. It will force you to do the right thing.

I do not think that Najib had an Islamic philosophy despite having a good Islamic background. So, I'm sure he can be forgiven.

Others who claim Islamic supremacy, have given Islam an international name: a religion of terror.

ps

I hope you are not taking offense to my rebuttals and posts.

Not taking offense. I would agree with 96% of what you say wrorraka. The 4% is the essential insight that there are victims and there are perpetrators. Najib, Hamida Bibi Karzai and their type of people are perps, inviting in foreigners with massive arms, and then inflicting things on people they never ask for. I think its hard to not call a boy a victim in a madrassah who is an orphan who was made an orphan twice over by war imposed by these sorts of ideologically arrogant and insane people, who then acquires an extremist viewpoint and acts on it. They point to a few nutcases in Kabul cajoled by Brzenzski as their evidences of foreign interventionalism yet forget the fact that the biographies of many many many rural Pashtuns who joined these movements are available now. These men themselves lived in Agrarian societies with tribal elders and land owners and their parents not being warlords or warriors or oppressors (but often owning nothing). An large number of these men were themselves orphans who took up arms in a struggle imposed on Afghans. In times of war, whether it be patriotism or any ism, that ideology fuels people to fight to the bitter end. War never moderates these concepts, rather it enhances and radicalizes it further. So it is far better to place the blame exactly and squarely where it belongs - to imperials and their constant bedfellows. We see the phenomena in Cuba. When Guevara, whose ism was marxism had to fight a brutal war of attrition agaisnt Batista he and his men would shoot people in the back of the head for being in cahoots with batista etc. I do not blame Che Geuvera I blame the powers that imposed the criminals like Batista and Batista themselves.

That being said, each man will bear responsibility for their actions and the excesses committed by the religionists are things that are their sins and are things that they too will have to own up to, in this life or the next. But as I said, one of the original victim and one is the instigator/perpetrator.

[Khostai]

Not taking offense. I would agree with 96% of what you say wrorraka. The 4% is the essential insight that there are victims and there are perpetrators. Najib, Hamida Bibi Karzai and their type of people are perps, inviting in foreigners with massive arms, and then inflicting things on people they never ask for. I think its hard to not call a boy a victim in a madrassah who is an orphan who was made an orphan twice over by war imposed by these sorts of ideologically arrogant and insane people, who then acquires an extremist viewpoint and acts on it. They point to a few nutcases in Kabul cajoled by Brzenzski as their evidences of foreign interventionalism yet forget the fact that the biographies of many many many rural Pashtuns who joined these movements are available now. These men themselves lived in Agrarian societies with tribal elders and land owners and their parents not being warlords or warriors or oppressors (but often owning nothing). An large number of these men were themselves orphans who took up arms in a struggle imposed on Afghans. In times of war, whether it be patriotism or any ism, that ideology fuels people to fight to the bitter end. War never moderates these concepts, rather it enhances and radicalizes it further. So it is far better to place the blame exactly and squarely where it belongs - to imperials and their constant bedfellows. We see the phenomena in Cuba. When Guevara, whose ism was marxism had to fight a brutal war of attrition agaisnt Batista he and his men would shoot people in the back of the head for being in cahoots with batista etc. I do not blame Che Geuvera I blame the powers that imposed the criminals like Batista and Batista themselves.

That being said, each man will bear responsibility for their actions and the excesses committed by the religionists are things that are their sins and are things that they too will have to own up to, in this life or the next. But as I said, one of the original victim and one is the instigator/perpetrator.

Yes and the same men claimed later that it was a big mistake to rebel against the communist goverment, becuase the missary and injustice that they expirienced afterwards was thousand times worsere than what those communist were doing.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Yes and the same men claimed later that it was a big mistake to rebel against the communist goverment, becuase the missary and injustice that they expirienced afterwards was thousand times worsere than what those communist were doing.

You missed what I was saying, I was talking about the hardcore fighters and who they were originally. I am pointing out that these Talibs and other young boys being raised in the status of war (which is an extreme environment) are themselves the victims of it. They lose their innocence (not just in Afghanistan but all across the world).

Regarding what you are alleging, even the less hardcore fighters like Abdul Haq, Ameen Arsala, Amin Wardak and others had no regrets whatsoever about taking out Najib and fighting the Soviets so you need to produce your proof for the comment or provide a reference, otherwise its just an opinion of how people feel or a passed on familial opinion. Their issue was with the duplicitous nature of Pakistan in the aftermath.

Had Afghanistan stayed under Najib, all we need to do is look at those moronic istan states on the other side with their strongmen and personality cult leaders to see what it would have become. It would have continued along the way to a totalitarian state where instead of Talib (who at least represented the agrarian country side and rural masses) the pseudo-effete effeminate "we are advanced" types would have been doing mass oppression the way we see going on now in those istan states.

All we see in our discussion is your denial that something totally foreign was injected into the life line and governance of Afghanistan... Bolshevikism and Marxist socialism had no way oxygen to survive except in some rare circles. Yet somehow you think all of us in Kandahar, Helmand, and all those provinces would have just accepted these people like Muhammad Saleh Zeary calling our way of life, our religion, our heritage as backwards and then trying to govern Afghans?

No, the inoculant foreign body/germ was that and some other foolish outside ideologies and the immune response was radicalization and war.