Bossbhai: Pls. answer

[Kriterion]

Iam not a pacifist but you cannot have Aggresive war mongering type messages in a holy book is what Iam saying. A holy book is supposed to be spiritual in nature enlightening and deep in intellect. Not something that resembles a war manual. So yes a holy book is better of being pacifist (if not spiritual or intellectual) .

so if a group of people evict you from your home and then declare war on you, defending yourself is "aggressive war mongering"? if so, rest assured, that all 6 billion plus humans on the planet barring a tiny handful of christians and the jain religion (i doubt if most jain practiioners could live up to the pacificism of mahavira) are "aggressive war mongerers". the above situation is exactly akin to kashmiri pundits being forced out of their homes (muhammad from mecca to medina), and coming back to take their homes back by force ('conquest' of mecca) after the kashmiris declared war on the KP refugees in say rajasthan (meccan pagans attempt to invade medina at badr). every quranic war verse is directly in reference to one or all of those scenarios and serve as a guide only if the same situation occurs in the future. thus offensive jihad, is not at all scripturally allowed by the quran. this is a fact, which is ignored by the likes of bin laden and his psuedo-muslim ilk. bin laden is a man driven by hate, and hate is the strongest of emotions. strong enough to cloud his knowledge of the very quran he claims to live by.

But I greatly appreciate you taking time to respond on this delicate topic in a very mature manner. Pls dont take my opinions personally its just some critical analysis from the other side.

thanks, i appreciate you're maturity without stooping to name calling and ad hominem...you'd be surprised how many people on both isles cannot agree to disagree in an agreeable fashion!

[Kriterion]

That hardly is grounds for penning a holy book and in that manner .. Muhammed isnt the first person to have fought invaders in that manner. And the problem is it goes on to stereo type the opposition as all evil (Based on their religions) and lays down strictures to segregate them and deal with them these are popularly found in any Islamic theocracy even today. and as I mentioned in my previous post a good check to see what the message is that comes out from the Quran look at the acts of any number of Islamic rulers since then and see what their deeds point to. Iam afraid its not a very good one.

the holy book wasn't actually penned for the war. the holy book was penned 3 years before any quraishites heard of islam and began to first bargain with muhammad, and when that failed to stop the preaching, to persecute him and his followers (sumayya and bilal ibn rabah to name just a few). the book was penned 13 years before muhammad's eviction from mecca, and i think 14 years before the quraish launched their failed invasion of medina at badr. i'm glad that you see that the quraishites were the invaders as both academic historians (critics of islam) and the quran point in that direction. i will also agree with you that the jihadist interpreation of scripture is the direct opposite of that: i.e genocide mongering. the opposition at the time was regarded as all evil, not for their religious views but for their societal behavior. tribe declaring war on tribe even though they are all distant cousins, excessive interest charging on the poor, female infanticide, adultery, and drunkeness were all rampant in that part of the world at that time. now, the behavior of muslims throughout the better part of the last 1300 years has been, frankly speaking, vile, abhorrent, disgusting, and anti-quranic. Aurangzeb's forced conversion or genocide of indian hindus has no basis in the quran - the word hindu is never mentioned even once. these were the delusions of devout or less than devout men, who nonetheless thought they were acheiving allah's will. for example, i could eat a porkchop and proclaim it to be allah's will, yet it would not be part of the "message which comes from the quran". even if i was followed by millions of muslims, it wouldn't be the message of the quran. for example, consider that there are, for arguments sake, 10 million islamic terrorists all over the world today. there are 1.3 billion muslims. the percentage of ordinary muslims, a list which includes people just like you and i, and others (rock stars, actors, street urchins, common criminals, professional athletes, doctors, engineers, academics, and rap stars) is very nearly 99%. in fact, 1.29 billion muslims aren't terrorists...that is 99.23% of all muslims are ordinary people. in that light, the message of the quran cannot be all that bad, especially considering that the 10 million minority aren't following the part of the quran they claim to live by (i.e the gun). at any rate, yes, muslims are the worst behaved folks on the planet. you read correctly. but this nothing to do with islam, and everything to do with god knows what or the misinterpretation of islam. there are hindus which misnterpret or , at least, can misnterpret sacred scripture, isn't that so? the actions of the followers should never be used to judge the ideology itself. otherwise every single religion and atheism itself would all take deadly hits to their credibilties, even jainism.

[THX_1138]

Widely accepted maybe by hindus...definitely not so by Jains or the academia. Claiming it is an 'offshoot of hinduism' is nothing more than hinduvta propaganda' date= similar to Han-Chinese propaganda where they claim 'all slant-eyed asians are offshoots of us'. It is the same type of propaganda that leads hinduvta fanatics to re-write our history books and claim Mahavir to be the founder of Jainism, when he is the 15th or 16th guide in their lineage- of which atleast two previous tirthankaras' exist in evidence. No i don't. Which is why i said 'oldest extant religion' and didnt LIE and indulge in PROPAGANDA like you do by saying it is the oldest religion. Your propaganda, disingeneousness and lies got exposed yet again. There is a HUGE difference between 'oldest religion alive' and 'oldest religion ever'. You claiming the latter is pure boolsheet propaganda of a hinduvta fanatic. I hope you teach the young ones to be more honest than you are.

no, its not... it is an archaeologically accepted theory. there might have been previous theological or philosophical movements which might seem close in spirit to jainism, but there is little if any evidence suggesting that buddhism and jainism started any time before or simultaneously as the hindu mythology.

[THX_1138]

Sarky' date=' that is most categorically not true. Nastik/Anastik was most categorically used in reference to believers/non-believers. There is 100s of reference to this, from Buddhist texts of Nagarjuna to the hindu texts of the bhakti movements- [b']the vedas were considered on far higher level of importance than the Gita or any such text and a believer in Veda was known as a Nastik, a non-believer as Anastika. Buddha had declared himself as an anastika and both buddhist and jain texts of those times reflect this reality, since buddha himself rejected the ultimate authority of the vedas.

i seriously doubt the voracity of that statement. the gita is quite possibly a summation of the theological beliefs presented in the vedas that deal with numerous other discussions. i dont think there is any hierarchical order here and if there is such an order, the gita receives top billing.

[Kriterion]

Thats not how the equation works ....... there have been countless Islamic rulers , clergy , scholars and such ( i.e) the top echelon and with some rare exceptions almost all of them have proceeded to strive for regressive Islamic theocracies which are blatantly discriminatory and oppresive towards non-muslims and this has occured all over the world over centuries and continues till date and I dont see any mass protests from the other 99.23% (the supposedly peace loving and pro-democratic and secular Islamic Populace) in protest of such Rulers , nations , ulema etc which tells me they are more than happy with that sort of setup. Contrast that with Hinduism which has comparable no.of followers but rarely do you see anyone taking to streets with the Gita in one hand and a Gun in other hand ready to die for the cause of Hinduism .. and in the very rare instances that they even come close to doing it (Like say Babri Masjid) the condemnation from the majority is swift and harsh. I would love to see some similar examples in the Islamic world. BTW plenty of subversive activities in India are traced to very well educated and sophisticated Muslims.

not at all disputing most of your above points. however, there have been plenty of internal critisizers if i might use the word. for example, we bangladeshis have tasleema nasreen, who as you probably know is an atheist, but most jews who critisize zionism are also atheist or non-observant, and many anti-hindutva hindus are also non-religious ( e.g. cc1981) or "godless lefties and commies" to quote some here. there is also irshad manji who unlike nasreen still claims to be a muslim. there's reza aslan who wrote the book "no god but god" in which he said that the islamic world was in the midst of a turbulent reformation akin to that of christianity 5 centuries ago. then there are all teh american girls and women who wore american flag hijabs to show their support to 9/11 victims and at the same time show that they are muslims. there were the condemnations of the attacks echoing from every pulpit in almost every mosque across America and Canada. There was shareef abdur-rahim, who played for the atlanta hawks, who gave donated $100 per point he scored for the entire 2001-2002 NBA regular season, which came out to be more than $100,000 USD. there are also progressive sheiks like hamza yusuf of the zaytuna institute who are quite popular and are even touted by the US government as representatives of moderation. just have a gander at banglacricket or **********, and for every arm-chair jihadi you will find 20 secularists at bear minimum. even if all muslims were violent, it doesn't prove (or disprove) that islam is violent as a religion. christianity is a fairly peaceful religion, no less peaceful than hinduism, yet the history of christianity is far more brutal than the history of christianity. yet hinduism has a sacred text, the bagavad gita, whose sole thesis is that just war is just. christianity has only a few verses from the NT which seem to advocate militancy ("i came not to bring peace, but to bring the sword" and "i came to spread division amongst people").

[CC1981]

but there is little if any evidence suggesting that buddhism and jainism started any time before or simultaneously as the hindu mythology.

Not Buddhism, but Jainism's historicity is definitely as old as hinduism. Material evidence of indic theology and philosophy is almost completely absent before 700 BCE period. The historicity of the vedas stand in large part due to the dating of the archaic sanskrit it is written in, itself a subject of controversy. Remember, 500 BCE period saw extensive social restructuring due to Buddha and Mahavir's successive teachings and the propagation of the vernacular, mass language was moved into the literary and governance sphere by the jain and buddhist doctrine of rejecting the archaic but poorly understood(by the masses) Sanskrit's exclusive hold on all higher literature. There are jain and buddhist texts that comment on Jainism being far older than Mahavira's time and the prevalence of Jainism in the Indian subcontinent from the mists of time to 500-600 AD period is universally accepted amongst scholars to be of massive proportions. I forget if it was the Satavahans or the Rashtrakuts, but in one of these dynasty's rule, most of south India was overwhelmingly Jain in population and this is corroborrated by both Indic and non-Indic literature of those times. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Hinduism is the oldest religion in the subcontinent - for eg, hindu tales like mahabharata and ramayana have their equivalent tales in buddhism and jainism as well. I have no reasons to conclude that the hindu tale is more authentic than the Jain tale - as i said, material evidence of Jainism, ajivika, carvaka and the vedic religion are all quite fuzzy in the pre-700 BCE period. So based on that, why should i accept that hinduism is the oldest and therefore, accept the hindu version that Krishna is the younger brother of Balaram and not accept the Jain version that Krishna is the older brother of Baladev ?

i seriously doubt the voracity of that statement. the gita is quite possibly a summation of the theological beliefs presented in the vedas that deal with numerous other discussions. i dont think there is any hierarchical order here and if there is such an order, the gita receives top billing.

Don't doubt it for a minute, because that is one of the few uncontested truths about hinduism through history and even valid today : the amount of hindu literary works and theological works through the last 2500 years that have, flat out put the vedas in a higher echelon than ANY other text is overwhelming and irrefutable. The status of the Vedas was considered to be divinely composed, instead of being written by an illuminated author such as Vyaas (or whoever it was that actually wrote it) for the Mahabharata. All literary evidence from classical India point to the fact that the vedas held supreme authority in spiritual matters and was the basis of religiosity in hinduism : the words nastika and anastika were associated specifically with the beleif in vedas. The heirarchal order has crumbled and been re-worked significantly in the last 1000 years, as the non-abrahamic religions in India went through a collective phase of decline, restructuring and amalgamation of the doctrines to present a united front over the Islamic barbarism of genocide, forced conversions and subversive conversions by tax discrimination. Hinduism emerged as considerably re-worked ( with the bhakti movement, then the baul movement ) and with much more emphasis on the trimurti as well as the rise of prominence of the Gita ( which held significance throughout classical indic history but seems to be a minor theological piece, akin to the manusmritis and other smritis of the time). The vedic adherents had never rejected warfare as a means of social progress while jain and buddhist literature of classical india consigns warfare largely as either defensive warfare of the nation or the offensive conquests due to the greed of one man-the monarch, whereas similar to Islam, the vedic dharma is not (and was not) averse to using offensive military force under the guise of 'collective betterment'. Though not as virulently warlike as the Islamists, the primacy of hinduism in acceptance of military solutions to the islamic problems meant hindu absorption of buddhists and jains in epic proportions as well as a slowdown in the spread of Islam, as India presented a fractured but consistent military resistance due to religious reasons. The fact that much of central asia, afghanistan and modern day pakistan were buddhist, with significant sramana and zoroastrian populace had swiftly fallen under Islamic subjugation was not lost on the more populous (and also more vulnerable) regions of india proper. In that respect, Hinduism does deserve kudos, as it was quicker than buddhism & jainism or ajivika to anticipate the radically militant nature of Islam's spread and was far more entertaining of the 'military alternative' to islamism. The rise of prominence of the Gita in this period ( last 1000-1300 years) is perhaps not a coincidence either - the rise of hinduism's popularity at the face of islamic onslaught and its mass absorption of the buddhist and jain population is easily understood by the rise in popularity of a book who's central thesis is 'its okay to go to war provided the reasons are right and its for a social cause'. Ofcourse, India having lost its technological,military and industrial edge over the arabia-persia region ( due to extreme destruction caused at the end of the Gupta period by the Huns), particularly in weapon-making ( by then the arabs had mastered and improved upon the wootz steal process invented in India and renamed it Damascus steel- a fearsome and well guarded metalurgical secret of the moslems in that era) , meant that Islam's march wasn't halted but slowed, with it finding overall conversion of the land and control of it far harder than the pacifistic and invididualistic approach put up by the buddhists & sramanas in central asia. PS: The fall of indian kingdoms and armies at the hands of the islamist turko-persians is a clear example of India's descent from a prime military power which the fearsome armies of the Persian empire ( who were for a long time the top 3-4 military power in the old world at that time) dared not attack to an easy target for the numerically inferior but technologically and militarily superior turko-persians. Their mastery and improvement of our steel making process meant that we lost a much vaunted advantage in weaponry and instead become disadvantaged - their swordsmen and archers became more competent in war due to this reason. The fracturing of our economy by the Hun onslaught and its resulting political turmoil (where india became a battlefield of 4 empires : Pratiharas, Pals, Rastrakut and Cholas) meant our other great asset was gone : war elephants ( which took exteme amounts of wealth to maintain in significant proportions and the once incomparable armies of Ashoka or Vikramaditya, marching with 6000-10000 war elephants was replaced with a few hundred war elephants at best). Since the Turko-Persians have always held a qualitative and quantitave advantage over Indians in respect of horses, the equation tilted against us irrevocably.

[Kriterion]

The others that you mentioned are all too negligible in the scheme of things but I must mention this about Irshad Manji .. I saw her interview on TV and she had the gall to tell that Islam offers more rights to women than is portrayed or some such hilarious tidbit :-D

of course, but do you really think it ends with all that i mentioned? thats all that i know of. actually there are more. you can add Muhammad Ali and Saleem Rasheed (a linebacker at the time for the University of Alabama). yes they might be 2 people, but in a country where sports are followed pationately their actions and words go quite far. a lot further than some imam in a mosque, but we have that too. and shaikh hamza yusuf is not neglible. all 7 million US muslims have heard of him, so his ideas are not all neglible because i'm sure there are at least a couple hundred thousand who would agree with his beliefs, at bear minimum. its like saying that the 90% of hindus who aren't followers of the hindutva ideology are negligible.

But these are all just piddly nuisance when you look at the other side ... wherein you have a org like CAIR whose office bearers are linked to terrorist orgnization and there was this Fatwa business sometime back where CAIR was challenged to issue a token fatwa on Bin-Laden something that never materialized for a long time before I stopped following that. Then there is

cair is not an organization which cannot issue fatwas...only a scholar can do that, and as cair is a lobbying group, they probably don't have many scholars.

Been there and done that albeit many yrs ago .... Are you saying that a discussion such as this one is even allowed in those forums these days ?

it would actually be allowed, but nipped in the bud. however the difference is, any poster who continually bashed hinduism or any other religion or even explicitly bashed atheisim would be banned in a heartbeat. at least in banglacricket, can't speak for the pakistanis.

Yes it does .... because you have cases where large populations converted from religions like Buddhism and Hinduism which are widely accepted to be peacefull religions have suddenly turned violent in India,Pak,Indonesia etc .... the contrast cannot be any starker in the subcontinent where almost all Terrorist activity is tied to Islam. Its too much of a coincidence to suggent millions having completely missed the supposedly peacefull message.

define large. of course i believe many if not most muslims have missed the context of the quran and the relationship the "authentic" hadith plays within that quranic framework. haven't most hindus in india missed the message of hindutva which you and only a few others have been astute enough to pick up? haven't millions of commies and maoists in Bengal missed the whole idea of what exactly a secular (or non-secular) india is supposed to mean? understanding abstract thigns like religion are not easy, especially in countries where 75% of people are more concerned with getting single meal a day. if general relativity is misunderstood even by physics students, what then about religions?

Its not as cut and dry as that ..... there is a lot of context to it and its certainly not the main theme and ofcourse it does not go on to classify the opposition as Evil unbelievers. The message from the Gita is on a different intellectual level as compared to any similar text which is why you dont see people misusing it.

i think you're being a bit one-sided here, with all due respect. you see the quran has a context as well...which i explained in previous posts which absolves it of any blame. blame the actions of muslims whos actions even context does not vindicate. people aren't robots who perfectly follow the ideology that they claim to adhere to. otherwise no one would commit adultery, or incest, or lie to their parents about who they've been hanging out with. a case in point about context, if you check out cricinfo's latest news, it has the headline by bangladesh captain "we will fight all the way"...which given his first name of mohammad, indicates an offensive jihad against the australian "infidels". but we know thats not true. if a cricinfo headline from yesterday has context, how is it that the quran does not? and to top it off usually the people use the wrong context or ignore it all together. as for the gita, the context is quite simple. there is a war going betweeen arjun's side and the "bad guys". the charioteer who turns out to be krishna is out convincing arjun that violence to fight injustice is just because its self defense. i agree with him. do you disagree with the gita? arjun is not convinced, and then krishna becomes more philosophical and says why are you afraid of killing? you actually cannot kill. non-exitance can never be, even the dead "live"...this life or world is not all that there is. finally in the end, arjun sees that krishna is right, and end of story. so the idea that just war is OK, was the MAIN POINT of the gita. of course the gita is just a tiny fractiono of scripture. but in teh same vein, just war is, not the main point of the quran either. the main point of the quran is simply that god is one and that mankind should submit to this god. everything else is detail.

[Kriterion]

As I s

I said its in the millions depending on how you count. If you take into account only those who are caught and punished then that would in thousands a piddly number which is often used as an excuse by the apologists who have quite succesfully used the 1% theory lest us realist wake them up from their deep slumber inside that plush airconditioned ivory tower.

in my previous post, i used a round number of 10 million terrorists which equates to less than a single percent of the worldwide muslim population. if you consider that roughly 33% of african-american males in the US are either in prison or on perole, a racist could very easily claim that being black is a "pre-requisite" to criminality. if you study the lyrics of most rap and hip hop songs, one can only reinforce that "fact". now the question is, is society therefore willing to say that black people are inherently criminal, or that all black people are criminals? i also am greatful for the discussion and i hope that at some point you can tell me your panoramic viewpoint as well as any possible solutions to the problems we face today. regards.

[Kriterion]

Wrong comparison. Because blacks are not known to demand special rights based on color and dont discriminate the rest based on that nor are they known to consider themselves as the "choosen ones". And those 33% arent exactly well organized into a group of any political significance (never mind a sperate religion) nor do they enjoy any support from the rest of the 67%. Basically you are comparing apples to oranges.

you are correct, but i wasn't making any such comparisons. i was just pointing out the numbers. 33% and yet those blacks must be a "tiny minority" but a similar number of 1% is usually represented by the media and islamophobes as "a majority". i understand they are apples and oranges, but i wasn't comparing the apples to oranges...rather the number of apples to the number of oranges, and their respective perceptions of those numbers.

[Kriterion]

I have explained why that is done in detail earlier. It comes down to the tendency of Ummah to demand chunks of land the sooner they get a political/military stronghold ..... and this is a worldwide phenomena .... and you can see it in action as we speak in Kashmir. what is the rest of the Indian Ummah doing to stop it ? absolutely nothing. but yeah if Saddam is hung 5000 miles away they will spring to action pronto.

that might be true - and it is (except for the last statement), but that doesn't mean that a 1% becomes say 15% or 50%. in other words, you have to admit that the written/spoken word of media is not mathematically supported. at any rate, lets move on to something a bit different...i don't wish to argue the actions of muslims, because frankly, they can't be defended 95% of the time. you're hatred is fully understandable, and whilst i never like to excuse biggotry, the history of india vis a vis islamic conquest lends me to empathize with your plight, much as i disagree with your views. we are all human, and each and everyone one of us is susceptible to the same emotions (but thats another debate alltoghether :-D). so changing the subject what is your opinion on the earliest history of islam. in other words, do you agree with academic historian accounts that muslims were driven from mecca to (first ethiopia) and then later to medina? because according to the islamophobic critics, all the war verses of the quran were revealed after muhammad's move to medina.

[Kriterion]

It may very well have been what you claim it is and all for a very good cause but given the track record since [ and ofcourse the direct corelation with the written verses ] its very hard to beleive . And there is a good chance that history was written by the victors.

well hatred usually leads to anger...but again its a natural human response. everyone's done it, everyone does it. history is always written by the victors, but in this case, the quran confirms the history, because if it had no correlation to actual events, it'd be quite easily discredited. in other words, suppose muhammad never fled mecca to begin with, but always lived in medina and then conqoured mecca. how would verses like "fight against those who drove you out of your homes" resonate with his followers? they'd be like "drove us out when???". unlike most other religious texts which usualy contain historical stories, true or false, the elements of the quran we are discussing occurred in the present (i.e at the time muhammad 'wrote' the quran). hence fabricating things would be difficult. you see he could make up things about theology that aren't true, but making up history which people actually watched unfold before their own eyes would be futile and self-defeating. besides, if one wishes to doubt the "authenticity" of the quran one has to doubt the existence of islam as a whole. what if islam was just something invented 1000 years ago, just prior to the invasion of india? perhaps muhammad never existed, he might just be a concept in the minds of a billion people. and if he never existed, how can he be evil?

[Ram]

I am just really really sorry guys. This thread has gone far too far in the realms of religious discussion.