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- Is Hizb-ul-Tahrir a cult?
There have been many more stories like this but more I read stories like this, it clearly comes across as a cult. I went to have lunch at Brick Lane and passed a mosque on the way. These Hizb chappies were standing outside, handing out this leaflet. I grabbed one on the way (the chap hesitated but i was too quick! :). And you can immediately see the cult like thinking because anybody who says anything like this:
In this climate of attacking and smearing Islam we must stand up as a united community and enter into a vigorous debate with the way of life in the west i.e. secularism. For it is not merely that they attack Islam, it is also that they are blind to the flaws that exist in this secular system that they export across the world. While they resort to abuse and insults we should follow the example of our Prophet (SAW) and show the flaws and wrongs of western secularism that has brought so much misery to the people of the world. Rampant materialism, a widening wealth gap, individualism, rape, child abuse, racism, occupation and oppression are the fruits of a world ruled by man’s freedom to do whatever he pleases. The secular age of man has been arguably the most bloody in human history. Secondly, we should continue to join the work to establish the Shariah in the Muslim world. Britain is where so much anti-Shariah and anti-Islam propaganda is created and exported. We need to counter this propaganda by illustrating the great weaknesses in the secular model that is so often immorally exported at the barrel of a gun, or as a condition to humanitarian aid.
has some screws loose. For example, in no country with Sharia law, either current or past, has a situation been where any of these problems were non-existent. So they are running towards an idealised goal or a golden age which never exists or existed. No wonder brainwashing and cult like behaviour is exhibited. If you delve deeper into their thought, there is nothing, no thinking, no arguments, no common sense, no idea about political governance or legal system. For that matter, most of them dont know about the Quran itself. Which is very regretful, but there you go, poor sad chaps.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:42:00 +0000 - The other shoe dropped about the Deoband rejection of terrorism.
I have been looking at the announcement by the Deobandi scholars who said that terrorism was against Islam. Unfortunately, while it was ok, it wasnt worth the paper it was written on because that kind of blanket condemnation is useless. And would a terrorist group follow it? Nope. So the points are
1. No point in blanket condemnation by mullah's, its useless.
2. The Mullas dont know Islam.
3. The terrorists dont know Islam.
4. Both dont know Islam.
5. Both know Islam and there are more than one types of Islam.
I quote from the terrorist leader himself:
"We hold the ulema of Deoband in high esteem, but expected them to mention the armed struggles in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Arakan in the light of Qur'anic proclamations on jehad fii sabeelilah or qitaal, and try to clear the misconceptions of the Indian people and the government. "The ulema have totally ignored this, which is regrettable," he said.
So, back to square one. The fact that they are using Islam as an ideology is simply a fig leaf, they are basically criminals, by looking at Islam and pushing for a moderate Islam or what have you will not do anything at all. On the flip side, Muslims should realise that identifying with these terrorists and their ideology means that they are giving them succor. Just ignore them, tell them that they are not Muslims but criminals. End of story. Dont get into an argument.
Just couple of days back, somebody was saying that Hindu's must protest against some criminal low life rapist, murderer and criminal types in India who were creating mayhem. The fact that they are Hindu's is incidental. It might as well be that they also have head hair like I do. Dont give a toss. They are criminals and murderers, rage boys, to heck and hell with them. Throw them into jail. And if somebody is stupid enough to ask me to condemn their behaviour, I will do it as an Indian, a citizen, a secular humanist, a human being, but sure as hell I would not pander to this typification!
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:26:00 +0000 - Semitic Names!
I was forwarded this note in one of the lists. About how the various Semitically named american hero's. I quote:
At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who "introduced presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused Barack Obama of sympathizing with 'world leaders who want to kill us' and invoked Obama's middle name -- three times calling him 'Barack Hussein Obama.' " John McCain repudiated Cunningham's low tactics and said that using the middle name like that three times was "inappropriate" and would never happen again at one of his rallies.
I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!.....To that, somebody responded saying that all Christian names were Semitic. And my response to that was...
You have a point there, xxxxx, but then I guess, Semitic as the author meant, was "current" Semitic. Or names as you would find currently in the middle east. Its just how different one see's "things" in the past. You mentioned Jacob and from the same root comes Yusuf.
Got me thinking, The "Europeanization" of Christianity, the expansion of the Islamic Empire, destruction of the Byzantine Empire, etc. etc. meant that it got cut off from the Middle Eastern roots. Another way of looking at it is to look at how Christ is represented in art down the ages and down the regions. The general representation is of a frail(ish), tall, delicate white man, while, according to scientists (there were several documentaries around it), he would possibly have been more of a stocky, coarser featured, powerfully built man. Perhaps that is why the documentary came as so much of a shock.
While saying that, Islam was not torn from its roots as was Judaism and Christianity... and then again, the reaction (both theologically and culturally), the reactions to that tearing was so different.....
Curious how people react to their histories, what they hide and what they emphasise!
Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:15:00 +0000 - Biofuels push up cost of farm goods
More on how this rampant rush to biofuels is mucking up the world's agricultural society. Has anybody thought about what will happen to the food prices if all the bloody farming land is switched to bio-fuel food grain production? I quote:
Agricultural commodities prices will remain high for the next few years, boosted by strong demand from the biofuels industry and robust consumption from emerging markets such as China and India....The price of soyabean, wheat and rice have surged this year to all-time highs and corn prices have jumped to a 12-year record. The costs of coffee, cocoa, sugar, meat, poultry and dairy products have also risen sharply.
Its the poor in the emerging markets who will suffer for this unmanaged environmental policy and the sad thing is, none of the environmentalists are saying anything about the fact that the poor are getting hungier and poorer. But then, saving the planet is more important, let the poor starve. Typical bloody bleeding middle class western liberalism. Hate it. Simply do not think through their silly ideas.
I just saw this news item today. What's the benefit? It will not improve sustainability that much and if airplanes start using biofuels as well, then the price of foodgrains will rise even more. Typical silly choice. Like not buy anything made by child labour but not worry about how the child will be educated or fed.
Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:18:00 +0000 - The triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire: An economic interpretation
What a fascinating paper. Imagine trying to use economic models to describe how Christianity moved from being a sect to a religion in the Roman Empire? You see, the author tries to explain and understand how a religion which started off being exclusive became open to all while on the other hand, became very doctrinarian and dictatorial about theology.
So being open as well as rigid at the same time, and how did that help in making the success of the religion in a relatively short period of time? Also, why did all the theological debates around 320AD break out at the same time across a wide variety of countries ranging from Egypt to Asia Minor? The answer can be found in the rational choice theory and the author applies it to the fight between paganism and Christianity.
You see, there was never a question of conversion in Greek or Roman times, you can switch from one deity to another, no problems, as long as you are ok with the Roman Religion (see the parallels with today's secular regimes?). So what did Christianity bring to the table, so to say? and I have to give a lengthy quote here because this is the crucial bit.
Modern historical research ([Harnack, 1908], [Nock, 1933], [Bardy, 1949], [Latourette, 1954] and [MacMullen, 1984]) has shown that the Christian message made converts because it promised individual spiritual salvation, made this promise credible by a unity of doctrine and organization founded on books embodying God's revelation to humankind, and backed this long-term promise with a short-term network of mutual protection and charity that paid tangible benefits to members. Christianity asked of its converts a complete renunciation of all other cults and “insurances” against misfortune and an uncompromising break with the religious traditions that had seemingly made the Roman state the greatest power to date. Against these heavy costs, however, were to be set the benefits of spiritual salvation and material within-group security. These benefits would become especially valuable when the old order appeared to be incapable of further guaranteeing the security and prosperity it had prided itself of for centuries, as happened in the third century.
Its when political dislocation occurred that Christianity took root as paganism was not able to satisfy the Roman's (and that's broadly defined as all members of the Roman empire, not just the inhabitants of current Rome or Italy) ecumenical and spiritual needs.
The author talks about how the Jews were quite heavily involved in proselytisation at that time and how the Christians had to break away from being just another Jewish cult or salvation group and they used the unique theological basis of Jesus, his life, his incarnation and re-incarnation to produce clear blue water between the Jewish and Pagan practices. But this, in the initial cases, was restricted to only few members, admission was very carefully controlled. This could therefore keep the doctrine clean and controlled within a controlled group of people.
But if it had to grow, it had to throw open the doors to outsiders and that would mean that the doctrines would be exposed to different interpretations and then it would again dribble away into sectarianism at worst or paganism at best. So, the compromise that was drawn, and perfectly economically based, was that they threw open the doors but closed the doors on doctrine such as the Council of Nicaea. I quote:
Finally, first imperial favor and subsidization of the church, then disestablishment and financial starving of pagan cults, and lastly the lifting of Christianity up to the rank of official religion of the state under Theodosius in the 390's, with the accompanying proscription of all non-Christian cults, solved the church's problem of adverse selection in recruitment. By disrupting the traditional public cults of the literate upper classes and thereby lowering their opportunity cost of joining in, the church was able to sustain its huge organizational growth.
The author then creates an economic model to predict this movement (see beginning equation and graph) which shows how Christianity moved from sect to an universal church modelling the relationships between benefits of being a pagan versus Christian, the membership conundrum and equilibrium points. He concludes that the rise of Christianity was not a historical accident or an inevitable occasion but a perfectly logical and economic choice made by Romans of that time.
But this does not explain how Christianity dribbled away in Europe nor how Secularism arose from the basic tenets of Christianity. Or how it is arising in USA. Or how its flourishing in Latin America, Africa and Asia? Or how it arose via missionaries in the European imperial times in countries as wide ranging as India to Madagascar?
Or why it did not take root in China, India, or Japan? In particular, why did it not take root in these 3 countries which will, arguably, have the most pagan religions of all (Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and perhaps Animism as well?). Mind you, it is perfectly rational for conversion to happen in these countries. Whether it is because of fear, or economic benefits or peer pressure, generally, you can boil this idea of adopting another religion down to economic factors. As for why you continue in that religion is a different matter and for future research.
This paper offers an economic interpretation of Christianity's transformation from sect to universal religion in the Roman empire. It first points out paganism's apparent inability to provide individual security in times of distress, such as the third century C.E., as a reason for the increasing demand for monotheism. It then reviews Christianity's monotheistic competitors and points out the reasons why they lost out. Next, it addresses the Christian church's choice between exclusive membership and open access to all applicants on the day of its triumph and shows, by means of a cooperative model, that open access and universal membership were a superior policy if coupled with doctrinal radicalization. Finally, it analyzes the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries by means of a Hotelling-type linear spatial model of doctrinal strictness ranging from paganism to Judaism, and traces the theological choices that were made back to the church's need to distance itself from its potential competitors.
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:15:00 +0000 - Linking small farmers to retailers
Now this is a great idea and perhaps one of the only ways that small farmers can work together to align with the large agronomic value chains ending with the large or small retailers. By linking the small farmers with technology, it removes one of the biggest hurdles in the sustainability of small scale farming, and that is the element of scale.
Whether it is purchasing fertiliser or selling at the local shops, small quantity traders and farmers will always be penalised. I quote:
NEW DELHI: IT major Infosys Technologies on Tuesday said it has entered into a partnership with ACDI/VOCA, a non-profit organisation, for providing an application to improve efficiency of the country's agro supply chain.
The information and communication technology-enabled application minimises inventory requirement, reduces waste and facilitate better integration between retailers and farmers, Infosys said in a statement.
The application manages the supply chain from the level of profiling of farmer clusters, crop planning, scheduling, tracking and forecasting. It also enables farmers to access technical information such as data and images, access to region-specific weat her updates and market information such as daily sales volumes and average prices.
Currently, 1,700 small farmers are integrated into organised retail supply chains through this application and over the next 5 to 8 years the usage is expected to increase to a million farmers, it added.
"This solution gives the organised retail sector access to a reliable small holder production base," Mr Binod H R, Senior VP and Head (India Business Unit), Infosys Technologies said, adding that it decreases farm-to-market losses, currently estimated at 30- 40 per cent on certain products.
ACDI/VOCA is an international development organisation that promotes broad-based economic growth. This application falls under its growth-oriented $6.3-million Microenterprise Development Programme, a USAID-funded initiative. - PTI
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:19:00 +0000 - EU joins UN in slamming use of 'disproportionate' force in Gaza
What exactly is proportionate force? Should Israel just fire up an unguided rocket for every unguided rocket which comes across?
Or perhaps unguided bombs dropped in a carpet bombing pattern across Gaza?
How about random artillery fire, and since proportionality demands ratio's and proportions, so measure the strength of the rockets and then use that size.
Sometimes I wonder why these politicians are allowed to get away with saying such fatuous sayings? Journalists should challenge them.
And more importantly, if you cannot influence the outcome, then do everybody a favour and shut up because you become part of the problem not the solution.
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:52:00 +0000 - The education of a child starts 100 years ago
I read that quote last week and was deeply influenced and impacted by it. I have been thinking about it ever since. It makes perfect sense, what my daughter is reading now or what my son is studying now is based upon things which started centuries ago.
Then comes this article in today's FT, which I support fully. It asks for a world education bank. I quote some snippets:
Education is a well-established global development priority. This was reiterated in 2000 when, at the UN millennium summit, the goal of “universal primary education for every child” was enshrined as the second of the eight millennium development goals the international community set itself to attain by 2015. This is a goal that we are very unlikely to meet.
A World Education Bank would raise the profile of education as a development goal. Its sole purpose would be to promote education at all levels in any country that asked for help. Developing countries would be prime beneficiaries....
While the concept is too wooly at this moment and it is not clear as to how the PISA work or the UNESCO institution will work, but it is a step in the right direction. It is a severe indictment of UNESCO that it is now reduced to a bureaucracy which can easily be shut down and replaced with this nice, tight World Education Bank.
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:35:00 +0000 - Tata to use Virgin Mobile brand in India
I am puzzled, why would Tata want to use Virgin as the brand-name? Tata has a very good brand name in India and rapidly across the world. The only reason I can think of is that its too fuddy duddy, too quality.. etc. etc. and so they went for the Virgin Name. "Virgin" gives the frisson of fun, excitement and slightly risque image to the entire exercise.
But I bet some moron somewhere is going to get upset and launch a legal case against the name stating that its against some bloody culture or something. Frivolous lawsuits, thy Elysian fields are in India. You just wait...
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:36:00 +0000 - Sometimes I do think the death penalty is justified
Sometimes when I read stories like this, I do think that the death penalty is justified. What kind of an animal is this man? How can a man do something like this to his 15 MONTH old nephew?
Technorati Tags: Crime
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:10:00 +0000 - Counting cash
Now I never realised how cash is counted in different ways around the world! How interesting! Teller Training?
Technorati Tags: Humour,Financial Institutions
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:33:00 +0000 - A compelling case for a do-nothing Budget
This is the most shameful commentary on the current Labour government. The fact that business is basically telling the chancellor to just shut up and do nothing means that we all think he is basically incompetent. Since we cannot fire him, the best we can hope for is that he does not damage the country any further by doing anything. Just sit there, quietly, do nothing.
What a tragedy, 8 months of incompetence and dithering and the reputation moving towards mud status!
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:30:00 +0000 - God is not a woman? what on earth?
This is bizarre, I always knew that God was a woman. And the proof is simple, just figure out every time you said, "oh! God" or "Oh! my God!" and you will know that it was 90% related to women. So it HAS to be a woman. Who else but a woman can come up with a woman? and a man, while you are at it. A man would have come up with an ambulatory beer drinking penis while women, well, ok, you get the idea. But obviously because of the chastity requirement, the Pope does not know all these interesting factoids hence thinks that God is a male.
I quote:
The Vatican has cracked down on feminist interpretations of the liturgy, ruling that God must always be recognised as Our Father.
In a move designed to counter the spread of gender-neutral phrases, the Holy See said that anyone baptised using alternative terms, such as "Creator", "Redeemer" and "Sanctifier" would have to be re-baptised using the traditional ceremony.
The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said yesterday: "These variations arise from so-called feminist theology and are an attempt to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistic."
Instead, it said that the traditional form of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" had to be respected.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:38:00 +0000 - MEPs reject EU move to publish expenses
Now why am I not surprised. You are actually asking turkeys to vote for christmas? what do you expect them to say? Asking MEP's to be transparent about their pig in the snout behaviour is frankly silly. They would not do it willy nilly. See the numbers:
And what data protection concerns? what about protection of my money which you are spending, you useless morons?
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:51:00 +0000 - What is the military covenant?
So many people forget this basic bargain and covenant that we civilians sign with our armed forces, and it is like the Hippocratic Oath, we should read it once a year at least!, are you hearing, Parliament? which is playing fast and loose with our squaddies? I quote:
The phrase "military covenant" refers to the contract that is supposed to exist between servicemen and women and the civilians on whose behalf they are willing to die.
It is an informal understanding, rather than a legally-enforceable deal, but it is nevertheless treated with great seriousness within the services.
The army doctrine publication says: "Soldiers will be called upon to make personal sacrifices – including the ultimate sacrifice – in the service of the nation.
"In putting the needs of the nation and the army before their own, they forgo some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the armed forces.
"In return, British soldiers must always be able to expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they (and their families) will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service.
"This mutual obligation forms the military covenant between the nation, the army and each individual solider; an unbreakable common bond of identity, loyalty and responsibility that has sustained the army and its soldiers throughout history."
Military historians point out that the notion that society owes a special debt to soldiers goes back centuries.
As an early example of the covenant, they cite an act passed in 1593 ordering parishes to make special provision to help sick and wounded veterans.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:27:00 +0000
