Wright Brothers from Peshawar

[badmash_khel]

Barakzai and Karachi both made good points.

Extremism does exist and muslims should always try to stay away from going to the extreme as Islam encourage the middle path.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

^ 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

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

Yes but extremism does not translate to violence until the right match is lit and the right fuse is set. As noted you ignored the point where many of AQs top leadership were folks that were well off or from elite families within the Arab and Muslim world in general. A Pakistani may hate Hindus due to conditioning, and a Baptist may hate Muslims due to conditioning but they are generally not willing to take action until they feel their autonomy and their way of life is directly threatened.

You can open all the schools you want to and air lift Harvard and drop it into Khost Province, wont make a bit of difference. How did the US and Canada get to be the technological world leaders and economical world leaders that they are today? Did they get there with the Turks occupying their country? In history is there ever an example you can provide, besides the legendary but mythologized Cyrus the Persian, wherein an occupying super power allowed a nation state to advance to its own level while still having the ability to make autonomous decisions? Take Japan for instance, it was already a super power and infrastructure already existed for its advancements. Nonetheless, Okinwawa remains occupied and the locals still chafe at the base presence. Japan's own cultures, customs, and religion were unalterably lost in the McArthur occupation.

The idea that you can somehow impose your reasonable well off middle class viewpoint from interactions within Canada onto a youth in Khost Province is akin to orientalism practiced by folks like Professor Bernard. It paves the way for western states to take on the mantle of: if we just build them schools they will ignore what we are doing and who we are backing in their countries.

Also, a few years back, I still recall meeting an engineering student graduate in Chaman who was selling spices in the market. His degree access did not translate directly into a job.

Moreover, economic prowess also does not equal humanistic advances... take a look at Foxconn for instance.

A reading of the Quran itself indicates that there are humanistic principles in many peoples. Specifically a verse from Surah Baqraah is enough to show that the Quran encourages a nonaggressive and nonjudgemental stance.

Do you really think that an Al Shabaab recruit drive is not likely to show supporters when Christian Ethiopia (a traditional enemy state of Somalia) is given arms to invade Somalia, a third world nation without any rich resources? Sheikh Ahmad, the current Somali leader is considered of a sufi variety and originally was allied to the Islamic Courts Union which wrote to the US indicating they wanted to normalize relations and not give housing to any outsiders. The response? Special forces deployments and arming Ethiopian Christians that would rape Somalians. Yet George Cloony is too busy bringing attention to aggression in Darfur and South Sudan... yet the public ignores the fact that arming Ethiopia was like arming India to invade Pakistan.

Since when did Somalia ever indicate an aggressive stance toward the world or the West? Was it not Clinton that sent in Black Hawk?

Yet you expect a Somalian to somehow take on your viewpoints and not anger at Uganda or other nation states being paid off to sent their poor soldiers to kill poor Somalians while these states have their own issues?

Your own theory makes little sense in that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have tons of money and send their students abroad to study in the "Great Satanic States" yet it does little to either enlighten or pacify their passions when it comes to Iraq or other conflagerations. Aramco has paid for the education of hundreds of engineers.

Your notion that somehow, places where history means something, where Salahudin Ayyubi is still spoken of as if he lived yesterday... where Alexander is rubbished because of his burning of Persian cities.... where Genghis and his raiders are remembered vividly... where Afghan raiders that came 300 years ago are still discussed in military journals would somehow secularize and adopt a mentality where they would choose lively goods over passionate causes is not a time honored reflection of reality.

Its not particular to the Muslim world. Why did Che Geuvara and Simon Bolivar abandon lives of comfort and prestige (the former a doctor from a good family and the latter a wealthy aristocrat) to fight a war of ideology???

[Karachi]

yeah yeah keep telling yourself that.
just because you lack humanity or were taught by inhuman people how to behave doesnt mean that is the agenda of muslims or muslim country.

now lets talk about your new open minded country of canada and how many muslims they have killed so far?How racists they are against muslism and how they demonise muslims in the media.
oh they are your gods now and they mad eyou so calle open minded that you celeberate hindu culture and history but demonis muslims.

offcourse you never want to talk abotu that because you are trying your best to be apeasing and look like them ,no wonder you guys are the biggest consumers of bleeching cream.

^ you must be living in a cave, muslims in canada have full rights to do what ever they want. That's why so many muslims are coming here.

your'e obviously some extremist, I dont want to waste my time talking to some who doesn't understand a thing about this world

[BarakzaiAbdali]

^ 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

Once again, that may be true. But that it is not enough to make some youth active in the sort of activites you note.

I provided two solid pragmatic examples of pre invasion and post invasion Taliban tactics and Sikh views towards them.

Its human nature. Red Indians in the majority welcomed the small nascent Puritan community and taught them to grow crops. Generations later King Philip, the Indian war leader struck terror into the heart of the colonies and scalped men, women, and children when he saw them breaking treaties and taking lands. He was the most educated red Indian of his time and extremely wealthy yet he led an insurgency that raged in New England for some time and threatened the existence of English presence in America. His original name was Metacom... read on him.

Read also on Tecumseh, another educated Shawnee Brave.

The way to encourage peace and dignity of all these people, Americans, Canadians, Britishers, pakistanis, Afghans is to end this war racket.

War is a racket in which the elite send others to die for some idiotic quixotic cause. The only justification I have seen to date that made any sense to me came from one biologist who told me that we are biological creatures fighting for resources and survival. We prefer our own memes and gene pool first and then we branch out accordingly. He told me that war was therefore an inevitable consequence of our very design. He ended with the notion that he could not judge Alexander as brute because the world has always been: Conquer or be Conquered.

I would like to think that Islam as a revealed religion addresses the development of the human cerebral cortex, the most fascinating set of gene changes and subsequent design modifications on neural tissue ever seen. Therefore, moralistic guidelines could allow us to banish this plaque of war between unsuspectic peoples forever. I understand that the biologist was correct in that the southerner white man will be suspicious of outsiders and want to gain for his own people and I understand that the impulse of the bedouin may be the same. Yet I would like to believe that what brings out these rages and makes them a supreme reality are our elites throughout these nations, playing games with our collective lives.

The Hindu in India and the Muslim in Arabia should understand that we have a chance now for the first time in history, with information available at the click of a finger, to truly understand applied history in action and ensure that leaders and the elite are held accountable. Should Lindsay Graham and Perves Musharraf want to send people to war it should be them leading from the front lines.

[Karachi]

Barakzai, I agree with you about the political side of it, there are many reasons why terrorism occurs and the west is fully to blame for that. They have invaded muslims lands and have killed millions of people and stolen so much of the resources. So I agree in that sense that the terrorism that occurs has a cause and even justifications, so I am not arguing about the political side of that.

That said, I still think Islamic extremism, things like forcing Islam down people's throat, should stop immediately, that has really nothing to do with the west invading muslims lands, this stuff is internal and has been going on for centuries. This kind of stuff is not Islam to begin with, this is pure illiterate extremism. My concern is that extremists with little knowledge have taken the leadership roles in many muslim countries and they are miss guiding the youth in every way possible. This is very visible in countries like saudi arabia and pakistan.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

if muslims were not treating peopel of other religions good than your hindus wouldnt exist alng with sikhs.Muslims ruled your beloved hindus for almost a century and yet there are hindus around.
you must have a hard time accepting that thos erulers converted youto Islam and released you from the caste system where you were considered dirt.
now yu have a hard time being callign yourself muslims and want to reform our religion to fit in your white world view.

I tend to agree with most of your sentiments and find you to be very patriotic for Afghans. Let me however offer you something to think about and you can offer me your view.

If you look at India now and you look at the Muslim populations in Ahmadabad and other muslim centric areas they are in a state of experiencing blow back.

I think that the motto of conquer or be conquered was proved true when the Sikhs invaded up to the Khybar Pass and were repelled by brave Afghans.

However, if you talk to some Hindus they reflexively make assumptions about Islam. This is because this was not the Holy Prophet at the head of the army going into India and it was not Umar Khattab or Khalid Bin Walid. Great Warriors like Ghaznavi, for instance raided Delhi and smashed some idols and tore down the gathes of Somnoth. Generations later the british went to Ghaznavis tomb and tore off the gates to give the Hindu population the notion that they were the avengers of the Hindus.

My point is that the sort of blow back the Muslims are facing from India is exactly because the way India was approach was not by the pure Islamic concept.

There is no way we can say Shah Jehaan and Babaar were governing by shariaat.

Imagine if one is a Hindu, and on the horizen he sees phalanxes of Muslims marching into India and then, heads roll. Timur comes in the next wave and builds heads of pyramids.

It probably did not look very different than the way an Iraqi felt when he saw Abu Ghraib and fellow Iraqis piled in Pyramids.

So now generations later the dominance of India and the blow back facing Muslims is becoming more evident. A good Muslim friend of mine from India studying in an elite medicine residency at Harvard was trapped for 12 weeks and nearly lost his spot because his area is especially subject to very detailed filtering processes that the Indian government makes no effort to expedite.

Had Timur or Ghaznavi or the others viewed India in the way that the Holy Prophet viewed the building of a nation state, we might have had the Malaysian experience in India as opposed to the current dangerous scenario.

I think this is exactly why Omar bin Al Khattab was wiser than his advisers even. In Jerusalem he praid outside a church instead of in it. The Priest of the Church became worried that Omar was angered and asked him about it. Omar replied that he did this so that Muslims would not force convert the church into a mosque simply because he had praid there. On a discussion of Iran, he actually disagreed with his generals that it was ready to be opened. In some ways he was right when we saw the Safavid blow back that resulted in the murder of millions of devout Iranian sunnis and the ground work for the modern shiite state laid down.

I am no scholar so dont take my word for it but the Quran appears to advocate a very strong defensive posture. Prophets were given the right to spread God's law on Earth. In the hadith literature i have been reading the two dont contradict as the Quranic law indicates that Muslims should always be ready to mount a vigrous defense and never be under anyone's foot. But the Prophet has hadith wherein he says "I" was given the order to make God's law manifest etc.

[Karachi]

if muslims were not treating peopel of other religions good than your hindus wouldnt exist alng with sikhs.Muslims ruled your beloved hindus for almost a century and yet there are hindus around.
you must have a hard time accepting that thos erulers converted youto Islam and released you from the caste system where you were considered dirt.
now yu have a hard time being callign yourself muslims and want to reform our religion to fit in your white world view.

read history, it was actually the sufi saints who spread Islam in south asia, not some invaders who came for just looting, people like mughal and others rulers did nothing, except live a life of luxury.

[badmash_khel]

I think the extremism can come from ignorance as well. Humans are afraid of the unknown, an example is the older ladies in my family who always advice me to stay away from blacks because they are ignorant and have never interacted with black people and have prejudices against them due to media stereotypes and other factors. By the same tokens our Mullahs back home have never picked up Hindu books and don't undrestand the logic behind Hindu rituals so they just tell people so they just label people as "bot parast" (statue worshiper) without even knowing the ins and outs of Hinduism. This all comes down to lack of exposure to other ideas, cultures and peoples. It goes both ways, there are ignorant uneducated rednecks who think muslims are all bad people and they are just arabs. With greater literacy and education I think extremism will go down but it also depends on the economic situation.

[Karachi]

I think the extremism can come from ignorance as well. Humans are afraid of the unknown, an example is the older ladies in my family who always advice me to stay away from blacks because they are ignorant and have never interacted with black people and have prejudices against them due to media stereotypes and other factors. By the same tokens our Mullahs back home have never picked up Hindu books and don't undrestand the logic behind Hindu rituals so they just tell people so they just label people as "bot parast" (statue worshiper) without even knowing the ins and outs of Hinduism. This all comes down to lack of exposure to other ideas, cultures and peoples. It goes both ways, there are ignorant uneducated rednecks who think muslims are all bad people and they are just arabs. With greater literacy and education I think extremism will go down but it also depends on the economic situation.

This is true, and this is why originally said that education and exposure to other culture may get them out of this ignorance. This is what happend to me when i came to Canada

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Barakzai, I agree with you about the political side of it, there are many reasons why terrorism occurs and the west is fully to blame for that. They have invaded muslims lands and have killed millions of people and stolen so much of the resources. So I agree in that sense that the terrorism that occurs has a cause and even justifications, so I am not arguing about the political side of that.

That said, I still think Islamic extremism, things like forcing Islam down people's throat, should stop immediately, that has really nothing to do with the west invading muslims lands, this stuff is internal and has been going on for centuries. This kind of stuff is not Islam to begin with, this is pure illiterate extremism. My concern is that extremists with little knowledge have taken the leadership roles in many muslim countries and they are miss guiding the youth in every way possible. This is very visible in countries like saudi arabia and pakistan.

Of course...that is true to even the Prophets time... hence the hadith of the bedouin that I noted. The Prophet himself had to restrain factions from his own people.

Another example is when two companions got into a fight about Quranic ayaahs and their ahruf based reading. The Prophet had them both read in front of him and told them that both were ordained by God. That is directly from Bukhari.

As I noted though, look at how easily the Prophet was able to control these elements. Imagine if the Medinan state had been under constant assault. The Prophet and God made sure that the Hudaybiah Treaty validated taking control of Mecca when the Meccans broke it left and right despite the 10,000 Saints that preferred to take it a year before.

In the modern era, there are many folks who will stretch the religion to not being valid (Manji) and others who will use it as an excuse to be vagrants.

How scientific are we if we are taking two mutually exclusive concepts, i.e vagrancy and vegabondism and, for the sakeof our own comfort, imposing that on a whole insurgency movement?

Look how the US is unable to even discipline or police its own soldiers. Through 3 wars now, soldier criminals from Mai Lai to Stephen Green have not gained the same consequences that they would have been given had they been simple citizens enacting the same on Americans here. And that is a technological super power. Yet an insurgency that communicates with paper scrolls and non digital audio cassettes is expected to police each and every vegabond that joints it?

The Lifting the Mask video makes it clear how difficult that is. Compare the wiser older Commander Dauran with the cow boy Omar. Dauran knows how to talk to guests and the media and gives Refsdal safe passage yet Omar kidnaps Resdal when the group is raided and attacked and contacts are lost between commanders and the men. It would be the same Dauran that would later demand Omar release Refsdal. Yet once expects Dauran or central leadership to be able to police Omars spread far and wide across the provinces? It would be as foolish of me to expect Petreus to be standing gaurd right in front 24 hours with digital cameras and sensors on each and every US soldier to track each and every movement.

[badmash_khel]

@shadowgoverner

Read Barakzai's posts. It will do you some good.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

I think the extremism can come from ignorance as well. Humans are afraid of the unknown, an example is the older ladies in my family who always advice me to stay away from blacks because they are ignorant and have never interacted with black people and have prejudices against them due to media stereotypes and other factors. By the same tokens our Mullahs back home have never picked up Hindu books and don't undrestand the logic behind Hindu rituals so they just tell people so they just label people as "bot parast" (statue worshiper) without even knowing the ins and outs of Hinduism. This all comes down to lack of exposure to other ideas, cultures and peoples. It goes both ways, there are ignorant uneducated rednecks who think muslims are all bad people and they are just arabs. With greater literacy and education I think extremism will go down but it also depends on the economic situation.

Thats true but the issue where Shadowgoverner is correct... and one needs to very deeply analyze his words and read between the lines... note that his goal and responses to Karachi are not even a whit or lick about theology they all center on autonomy and independence. Shadow governer is pointing out that the Americans have mastered the offensive war doctrine of slicing through and destroying an antiwar movement at home.

In the 60s and 70s John Lennon and others were leading a raging anti Vietnam war movement to the point that Nixon considered Lennon a threat and wanted him deported. The army was also conscription/draft based.

The brilliance of the Pentagon was to decouple war from the populace seeing it. Only 5% of Americans GDP is spent on the war and there is no draft making it an all volunteer army. Many of these folks were bamboozled in during the 90s with scholarships and the army was seen as a ticket to a free ride to college. The added brilliance of the yellow ribbon campaign and what not is that criticism of the Army is met with fierce media resistance. So Peggy Noonan can talk about how she wants the heads of the Iraqi youths in Fallujah on a platter in a sick manner akin to Herods wife niece of ancient times.... but the current soldier in the Panjwai massacre is spoken of as a hero with brain trauma who just lost it... as if Iraqis cannot have the dignity of "losing it when an army invades".

Shadows point is that people want to feel comfortable with not doing anything... so Afghans in the 80s when it was in vogue were all sporting pakowls and pictures of the Muj factions here in the US and the West. Even in the Taliban era these folks thumped their chests and a large majority still viewed them as kinfolk with some slight wayward ideologies. Now, when the going has gotten tough, the Muslim resistance is mocked and shadow governer is saying that folks are giving him slack for basically doing exactly what the Pentagon has created in the US. His point is that an insurgency thrives and has its lifes blood and oxygen on the support of the natives and the popular support. This is exactly why black operations have occured during insurgencies. Algeria was a prime example of this. The goal was tomake the Algerian Muslim resistance appear excessively violent. The CIA has now openly confirmed that it backed such moves to take the wind out of the insurgencies sails there.

So Shadows point is simply: If peggy sue from missouri is unwilling to criticize her troops, why are Muslims castigate dfor aiding and abetting, in a nonviolent sympathy, of their their own down trodden guerrillas mounting the only defense of their home land?

If the answer is an idealistic one of: Muslims always do right I think that one needs to read the sirah a bit more. For instance, the early Muslim state also had its own intelligence gathering missions and the Prophet became upset when a key piece of intelligence was leaked. He also asked his followers to remember that war is about subterfuge and intrigue and to remember that war itself is the ultimate lie... hence why it must be avoided to the last minute if possible.

So I think we need to step out of the GI Joe cartoonish reality built here in the US where Americans are taught that we are simply going everywhere to free people... yet we forget to mention it in the press and in these early conditioning cartoons that Lindsay Graham is also lobbying so that when troops do not live up the GI Joe mantra they wont be tried in the nation states in which they committed crimes (i.e they get immunity).

My point is that the Americans, from what Shadow is saying, are playing the game of war the way that it was meant to be played, with a combination of propaganda and societal conditioning... coupled to war maneuvers.

In any case, its all a racket and everyone needs to go to their baby corner.

[Karachi]

i agree with you that the mughuls werent really inspired by Islam but by power and lust.
they even tried that with pashtuns which resulted in their downfall.
i agree that most of these muslim leaders werent islamically inspired but to turn this into an anti Islamic argument is not honest especially when someone calling himself a muslim and saying this is selfcritiscism.
he doesnt criticise the hindu gujarath massacre,he doesnt talk abotu the british treatment and holocaust of indians he doesnt care about any non muslim entities and their crimes but he takes cheap shots at Islam by refering to wahabis in saudi or crazies in pakistan.

he makes it look as if Islam and muslims are evil and the likes of pamela giller are right on.

i have respect for people's opinions but when they are being mono and biased dishonest and generalise than that opinion is garbage to me.

dude hindu extremists in Gujarat are the worse kind of animals, when did I deny this, but this thread wasn't about them, that's why I didn't focus on them. Please stop making up stuff if you dont know any thing about me. Also just to clarify, I dont like hindus, especially the ones who practice the caste system, but there are also many hindus who do not follow their religion, they are looking for answers. My concern is when they see islamic extremism and muslims acting as extremists, this gives a clear bad message to them and other non muslims about Islam. If we acted as real muslims, by being pious, then obviously that will give them a positive message of Islam. Right now muslims are not portraying themselves positively to the world community. Even in India for example muslims are known to be number one in crimes, they basically run the indian under world, why is that? what kind of message are we giving to the non muslims there?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

i agree with you that the mughuls werent really inspired by Islam but by power and lust.
they even tried that with pashtuns which resulted in their downfall.
i agree that most of these muslim leaders werent islamically inspired but to turn this into an anti Islamic argument is not honest especially when someone calling himself a muslim and saying this is selfcritiscism.
he doesnt criticise the hindu gujarath massacre,he doesnt talk about the british treatment and holocaust of indians he doesnt care about any non muslim entities and their crimes but he takes cheap shots at Islam by refering to wahabis in saudi or crazies in pakistan.

he makes it look as if Islam and muslims are evil and the likes of pamela giller are right on.

i have respect for people's opinions but when they are being mono and biased dishonest and generalise than that opinion is garbage to me.

This is a very astute point Shadow. One of the key points that makes it so the insurgency thrives is not ignoring Muslim wrongs... but rather the double standard the world applies.

You are correct... so in Chechnya and Uighar provinces according to the narrative... Muslims have no right to have their own nation states; yet in East Timor and Southern Sudan Christians do. We need not even touch on Isreal and its reflexive support. John Stewart did a brilliant Dialy Show piece just the other day on how the UN Aid organization had its funding cut for African nations simply because that UN organization recognized Palestine based on a 1990s Congressional law.

Moroever, Kim Jong Il can be as vitriolic as he wants and not support any democracy and even actively claim to seek nuclear materials... yet his country suffers nothing at all.

Democracy is OK for Afghanistan when an occupier is present but its seen as a monstrosity in Egypt and the rebelling nation states.

Very good point that I forgot to discuss in terms of why Muslims are hesitant to instropect in this climate. How can you expect people to introspect and divide their unity when they are attacked from all sides?

[haviZsultan]

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

Brilliant. This is what we Pakistanis are capable of. This is what Pashtuns are. Patriotic, Nationalistic... he is very Nationalistic.