Wright Brothers from Peshawar

[Talal]

you guys really need to listen to what he says, people like this can really drive the society away from all the fundamentalist crap

[Talal]

what do you mean fundamentalist crap?
do you mean this can drive society away from practicing Islam?

I mean fundamentalist crap when i say " fundamentalist crap "...Islam is the exact opposite of it, don't know what your perception of it is.

[Old School Killiwal]

I mean fundamentalist crap when i say " fundamentalist crap "...Islam is the exact opposite of it, don't know what your perception of it is.

you upper class rich pakistanis who's children recieve education in the west have absolutely no idea about any pashtun issues. "fundementalist crap" is something musharraf and friends would say if he could speak decent english. i know the type who call a practicing muslim a "fundementalist". these same people drink alcohol in their homes and have "wild" parties. ive seen it all.

[Talal]

you upper class rich pakistanis who's children recieve education in the west have absolutely no idea about any pashtun issues. "fundementalist crap" is something musharraf and friends would say if he could speak decent english. i know the type who call a practicing muslim a "fundementalist". these same people drink alcohol in their homes and have "wild" parties. ive seen it all.

Were you perched on a window outside where the party was going on or were you invited as well ?

[Talal]

sorry bro
that doesnt make sense.
if you are a doctor you need to know and practice the fundements of medicine to practice being a doctor.
so fundementalist muslim means a practicing muslim who knows the fundements of Islam and practice it according to those fundements.
and its not crap its actually proper Islam.

Exactly but if your fundamentals don't come from Islam, then you can't call the person a fundamental muslim..You then refer to those fundamentals as crap i.e. fundamentalist crap.

[Old School Killiwal]

Were you perched on a window outside where the party was going on or were you invited as well ?

i was invited as well. that is why i left that hellhole and prefer living in the west. atleast white people here stay in their own culture and dont copy us like we do them.

[Talal]

old school & shadowgoverner...your views and beliefs are your own just like i have mine and it is my belief that (copy/paste original post) " you guys really need to listen to what he says, people like this can really drive the society away from all the fundamentalist crap "

now either listen to it or don't, it doesn't effect my health..I don't have the kinda stamina or patience people usually have on this forum for endless arguments..you don't need more than the required amount of common sense to go through my original post and understand its meaning...IF you don't then I'm sorry I can't help you there.

[Old School Killiwal]

old school & shadowgoverner...your views and beliefs are your own just like i have mine and it is my belief that (copy/paste original post) " you guys really need to listen to what he says, people like this can really drive the society away from all the fundamentalist crap "

now either listen to it or don't, it doesn't effect my health..I don't have the kinda stamina or patience people usually have on this forum for endless arguments..you don't need more than the required amount of common sense to go through my original post and understand its meaning...IF you don't then I'm sorry I can't help you there.

progressing and modernity does not mean abandoning your forefather's culture and religion ("fundementalism") in favor of european ideals.

[Old School Killiwal]

why is it so hard for you to accept it was a mistake to say fundementalist crap.
its just a cheap shot at Islam and practicing muslims.
stop using people' videos for your own agenda,and what are trying to say here that you are going to teach Pashtuns about Islam or that pashtuns being more fundementalist than you slightly hindu kind of muslims is something negative?

nahi yaar.

a guy who keeps a beard and prays 5 times a day is a backwards exremist but one who drinks, wears jeans, listens to rock and roll is a modern "example" for muslims all over the world to follow.

i just dont understand why we feel the need to constantly show westerners that we are just like them. we are not and we should be proud of our own civilization. it may not be perfect, but its who we are.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

An important discussion and point occurred here Talal.

I think the discussion you were trying to have was in respect to Extremism. That term was something that was even used by the Prophet himself, so I would think its reasonable to use.

The point being, extremism has roots. There really is insufficient evidence to say that extremism rests in the roots being poverty or complete lack of education. For instance, inner city African Americans are not fundamentalist Christians simply because they are poor.

The idea that technology and science can simply undo a mindset makes no sense. In fact, one of the things that Alec Station saw was that the members of AQ were engineers, doctors, and lawyers... not your run of the mill trying to survive farmer soldier. Rather, the largest study to date powered by University of Maryland shows that most of the Muslim world admires America's technological prowess and even parts of its governmental system. The general findings across ethnicity and country lines was an abhorrence for interventionalism.

Dhalia Mujahid and John Esposito supplemented this work with their own high sample sized studies and really stated the obvious: people in duress take on the language of movements that are familiar to them. So for instance, when the Yankees mess with Latin America, the farmer's language that galvanizes resistance movements bordered on socialist, populist, and communist ideologies. It was not necessarily that each soldier in Dr. Geuvara's infantry had read the Manifesto by Marx or supplemented that with Lenin's own meanderings. Instead, he saw his president, Allende killing himself as a result of a coup attempt instigated by the CIA and he took on a resistance. Across the world, the Iranian population, including the Tudeh party united under the Ayatollah's galvanizing banner.

My point is that your approach of posting a video where some guy builds a plane is neat, but its not the solution to extremism. The solution to that is ending colonialism and interventionalism in the Muslim world.

The issue here that was problematic is that you experienced an element of predictable blow back that one should avoid. By associating advancements made at the ground level with reversing the tide of Political Islamism, you inadvertently and dangerously associated progress with technological prosperity, leading to a reflexive near rejection of progress as a side effect.

I think what you were trying to say is this:
Back in the Prophet's day, there was an example of a bedouin, per Bukhari, who came in urinated in the Masjid e Nabi. The companions arose and were ready to give this guy a beat down, but the Prophet said simply: let him finish his urine stream and then had the companions wash away the urine. He then said to them: you were sent to make things easy.

Take this scenario and compare it with what you are trying to say that you would see today:

Bedouin walks into mosque and pees ---> gets machine gunned down.

or for instance:

Muhammad talks with his wife Aishah and tells her that he is loathe to modify the Kabah structurally because he sees that the Meccans are still somewhat attached to paganistic ways and his goal is not to instigate them.

versus

Folks blowing up Rahman Baba's grave because they see it as shirk.

I agree with you that these folks are responsible for their actions. In Islam we abhor the concept of original sin, i.e. no one can say I have the right to do wrong because others did wrong elsewhere.

However, being an observer explains alot. People take refuge, as I noted above in concepts that are comforting and when outside threats present themselves they galvanize under the banner of what they know. That is exactly why Robert Pape makes note that Gadahn's speech does not reference scripute... rather Gadahn advocates insurrection on behalf of an occupied kindred.

Remove the stimulus (i.e. NATO occupation) and you will see that either these folks you worry about will focus on eachother or that their support will dissipate.

A practical example: here is the pre invasion approach the Taliban took to Sikhs in Kabul:

"Ironically the rise to power of the hardline Islamist Taliban marked an improvement in the lives of those who remained — and some emigres even started to return.
“The Taliban did not suppress us — they respected our religion and if we had any problem they would resolve it immediately, let alone delay it until the next day,” says Singh.
Some Afghan Hindus were baffled by Western outrage at one Taliban decree — ordering them to wear a yellow tag to identify their religion — saying in practical terms it spared their clean-shaven faces from the wrath of the Taliban religious police, who insisted Muslim Afghan men must grow beards."

http://afghanhindu.wordpress.com/201...ertain-future/

Compare this with the post invasion retaliatory tactics:

"The Taliban has reportedly beheaded two Sikhs in Pakistan's lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan and sent the heads to a gurdwara."

My point is that you will be on a Quixotic quest if you think that an occupied nation will prosper and abandon extremism (ie. a normal appearing response to confrontation) simply if a few guys get engineering degrees and medical degrees.

The motto should be: Autonomy without exception and Meritocracy.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...-religious-tax

[Karachi]

I think Talal meant we need to kill extremism by education and inventions. Muslims as a whole need to contribute more to the world community in terms of innovations, science, technology etc... we have the potential, we have many smart people among us, it's just they need to be given the opportunity. Extremism on the other hand kills all that potential we have. Extremism has done no good for the muslim world except make us a backward people.

[khushal]

The Video is in Urdu so I dont know what they are saying. the ending is a contradiction of the saying "Pakistan Zindabad." India is progressing while Pakistan is backwards. Backward mentality zindabad? That doesnt make sense.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

I think Talal meant we need to kill extremism by education and inventions. Muslims as a whole need to contribute more to the world community in terms of innovations, science, technology etc... we have the potential, we have many smart people among us, it's just they need to be given the opportunity. Extremism on the other hand kills all that potential we have. Extremism has done no good for the muslim world except make us a backward people.

There is no proof whatsoever that education and technological innovation can undo extremism. If that were the case, America would never have elected Bush and the Republican party would never have been able to ride and still ride the evangelical sympathy wave. The issue is when extremism as one defines it becomes the dominant flora.

As a case example I can sort of use the language of medicine to make my point. There is a natural bug we all carry to some level in our gut called C difficile. It is a bacteria. When folks are put on heavy duty antibiotics C difficile, a bug that appears to perform a symbiotic function of sorts in our gut (ie. it has its own role and place as does clergy) takes advantage of the fact that the antibiotics kill its competitor organisms and it massively overgrows leading to severe diarrhea and disturbance and sometimes dangerous colitis of the gut.

In a society, clergy and other groups, like c difficile, have their role. Informed clergy who have studied are scholars who are supposed to serve as gaurdians of the faith and of religion. Local clergy usually do not meet the outstanding obligations that are required to actually be labeled as an alim. However, just as in the US, when an outside threat or the spectre of an outside thread is raised (antibiotics)... the population shifts to a language that it knows best (language of patriotism and religion) and the power of religion and these ideologies gains an ability to galvanize. So when the south fears its guns are threatened, that gays are dominating the air waves, and that their ideology of God is under attack, they take on an evangelical mantle. Contrast these folks with learned theologians from Vanderbilt or Harvard's seminaries and you will see that there is a chasm of difference between the local Baptist minister and a theologian.

You can educate the evangelical or the extremist all you want but it wont undo their beliefs and goals in respect to the attack on their way of life.

Prof. Robert Pape on his groundbreaking study "Dying to Win" (Part 4 of 4) - YouTube[/URL]

Start at 5 minutes 30 seconds in and listen to Gadahn's talk from Pape's perspective. Listen closely to Pape's assessment at the end. Note that Gadahn is not Pashtun, he grew up in an educated and liberal household etc. He also grew up in the technologically endowed West.

Now go to compare to native talk go to 6 minutes and 16 seconds into this video:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5e5_1283088242

Listen to Refsdal's recording of Dauran's speech to his Taliban compatriots.

Now in a few seconds you are going to see an antagonized Soldat or Toramana saunter in here and propose a plausible but unsubstantiated alternate hypothesis. Their proposal is that both these young men are actually under the incantation and witch doctor spell of a wahhabi panjabi nexus that spreads from the Levant and Africa to Central Asia and that this, not local instigation and occupation is what is causing these folks to think and talk like this.

The issue with this is that it plays right into the Steve Emerson narrative that these guys are ready to kill simply because Britney Spears wants to do a concert in Kabul and that young Kabul gals may imitate her. They want to propose the notion that somehow, in Somalia a Pakistani Wahhabi has laid down the groundwork for a large spanning Pakistani Wahabi Emirate of sorts.

THe issue is that none of the data supports their conclusions. All data to date supports the notion that these folks and Muslim populaces are upset and antagonized over policy, not skirts in the work place.

Does this mean that Muslims play no role in their societal decay? No... to each goes his own responsibility. So when you have Mubarak in Egypt willing to sell his people's wealth and autonomy for a few dollars... and the fact that the Egyptian people believe that US backed junta will simply allow the will of the people to prevail... that is a failing in the people to perhaps realize that Egypt is on its way to becoming a reflection of Pakistan in some ways because Egyptians were unwilling to do what Americans did nearly 300 years ago to earn their independence.

[Karachi]

^ by education i also mean understanding others cultures and their ways better. For example I'll give my example, I lived in Saudi Arabia for 14 years, when I was there my mind was closed, Just like a regular pakistani, i hated hindus, hated westerners etc... just because I was being taught that kind of stuff from the beginning of my childhood by people in my school, friends etc.... Coming to Canada and living here for a good 10-12 years has open my mind, I realized that even the non muslims are human beings, they are not some kind of evil people that we muslims make them out to be, especially the stuff we think about them in our countries. My point is there is a lot extremism and lies that are taught in muslim countries like pakistan or saudi arabia. Extremism has done no good the societies there

If they get involved in science, technology or even sports, perhaps their minds will come out of this backwardness since they will be learning a lot of new things and interacting with other people on a positive basis. Extremism grows in a society where people have nothing to do, no jobs, no schools, no extra circular activities and are mostly bored of their lives, they have a over all negative view of life and that's why they are willing to go to Jihad so easily and blow themselves up even for stupid reasons, like killing random people in a market.

Also the reason people elected Bush was because the idiots christian extremist living the deep south voted for him. Those guys are not educated at all, they dont know any thing about the world. They are as closed minded as some of the muslim extremist folks

[Karachi]

^ look, i know what people in countries like pakistan or saudi arabia think of non muslims, I have lived there for crying out loud. I know the ground realities of how non muslims are treated there, like third class citizens with hardly any rights. It's no fox news, it's reality