The Rot Within

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By Anwaar Hussain

tree_phixr2.jpgThe Muslim world stayed at the pinnacle of glories in science and technology for about 300 years from 900-1200 AD. Muslims’ scientific skills bloomed in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba, among other cities. Momentous progress was made in such areas as medicine, agronomy, botany, mathematics, chemistry, jurisprudence and philosophy. While the Christian Europe lagged behind pathetically, Muslim thinkers and scientists competed with Chinese for scholastic and scientific leadership.

That was then, of course. So horrendous has been the decline since then that, shuffling along like decapods, the leaders of a millennium ago are virtually scraping the bottom of humanity in the same fields. Perhaps a comparative look at the preoccupation of the Muslim world vis-à-vis the rest of the world would give us a fair idea as to the causes of this pervasive decay.

Here is what the rest of the world is busy in;

A new theory on the universe’s birth is being researched by scientists that suggests that our universe may have started not with a big bang but with a big bounce-an implosion that triggered an explosion, all driven by exotic quantum-gravitational effects.

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has solved the brain-scan cell mystery and revealed that the support cells dubbed astrocytes (because of their star-shaped bodies) form the link between neurons and blood vessels.

Scientists elsewhere have reached back in time 115 million years to one of the most successful flying creatures in Earth’s history, the pterodactyl, to conjure a robotic spy plane with next-generation capabilities.

Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE) are to carry out ground breaking research with collaborators from the University of York into creating electronic systems that can diagnose and heal their own faults in ways similar to the human immune system.

Questions like tackling time travel and why a cancer-related gene can help prevent some forms of the disease may too be near solution. These are just two of the topics that featured in a series of public events and hands-on workshops organized by the University to celebrate National Science and Engineering Week in March this year.

Other Scientists in the Western world have discovered a planet that could harbor life, are miniaturizing transistors to unbelievably smaller dimensions, cloning Rhesus Monkey to produce stem cells, engineering transparent material as strong as steel, excavating and scanning mummified dinosaurs and turning skin cells to stem cells.

And this is what we in the Islamic world are busy in;

Rashad Hassan Khalil, former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt issued a fatwa, a Muslim religious edict, in January 2006 that  for married couples, “being completely naked in each other’s company annuls the marriage”.

Saudi Arabia’s Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law denounced the adorable Japanese cartoon character Pokémon. The fatwa’s authors claimed that Pokémon games include, “the Star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel’s national emblem.” Religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates joined in.

Mullah Fazlullah of Pakistan, whose disciples have burnt down 140 girl’s schools in just six months in Northern Pakistan decreed that administering Polio drops to children was un-Islamic and in fact a Zionist conspiracy to make Muslim men impotent.

According to the NYT, a Saudi newspaper reported of a fatwa on the game of football. Just some of the main features of that ruling are;

1. Play soccer without four lines because this is a fabrication of the heretics’ international rules that stipulate using them and delineating them before playing.

2. International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like “foul,” “penalty,” “corner,” “goal,” “out” and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished, reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told, “You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is forbidden.”

3. Do not call “foul” and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose.

4. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.

It also turns out that fatwas can be bought rather cheaply. In India, the “cash-for-fatwas” scandal broke when a TV channel broadcast a sting operation showing several Indian Muslim clerics allegedly taking, or demanding, bribes in return for issuing fatwas. The bribes, some of which were as low as $60, were offered by undercover reporters wearing hidden cameras over a period of six weeks.

The reporters even managed to get two fatwas directly opposed to each other, concerning whether one could watch TV. The purchased fatwas covered a wide range of fairly mundane issues e.g. Muslims are not allowed to use credit cards, double beds, or camera-equipped cell phones, and should not act in films, donate their organs, or teach their children English.

Furthermore, quite a few of the fatwas were purchased from noted and respected clerics, showing that the practice is not limited to marginal scholars. Some of these clerics work at important institutions - one belonged to India’s most famous Islamic seminary, the Darul Uloom at Deoband.

A Saudi scholar has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of television networks broadcasting “immoral” programs. The 79-year-old scholar, who holds the highest judicial authority in the kingdom, made the comments during a radio show in which he was asked by a caller for his opinions on immoral programmes being broadcast on Arab televisions during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Sheikh Mohamed al-Munajid, a former diplomat and cleric who often appears on Saudi TV said mice were “agents of Satan”. “Sharia (Islamic law) calls for the extermination of all mice. That includes the rodents as well as the famous cartoon mouse”. He was referring to Mickey Mouse.

A Malaysian museum closed an exhibition on supernatural beings after Islamic religious authorities issued a fatwa against it. The National Fatwa Council had ruled that exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims. Abdul Shukor Husin, the council’s chair, was quoted as saying that “supernatural beings are beyond the comprehension of the human mind.” “We don’t want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs”.

Ezzat Atiya, a male lecturer at Cairo’s al-Azhar University gave a rather unmentionable solution to the ‘problem’ of Muslim men and women working alone in an office. The scribe’s sense of decorum does not permit him to put that one down here. The reader is requested to go read it by himself and read it ALL.

Perhaps this too is a Zionist conspiracy to exhort all these distinguished people to take lead roles in the theater of the absurd. If this is the state of mind of the elites of the Islamic world in the 21st century, one shivers to think of the dark contents of the souls of Amir Mangal Bagh and Co.. We truly are standing at the brink of the abyss. The Zionist conspirators can now take a break, relax, sip a beer, and watch the mighty plunge.

However, all this nonsense does bring a few questions to the scribe’s mind. Have we gone into a time warp as a whole? Are we in the midst of regenerative degeneration, or degenerative regeneration? Or is it just plain degenerative degeneration? Is it finally time for the swan song?

And above all; is the scribe ‘undermining his faith’ for thinking these thoughts?

You decide.

X-X-X

Anwaar Hussain



Comments

12 Responses to “The Rot Within”

  1. Ali Intikhab Raza on October 6th, 2008 6:51 pm

    Thank you for bringing up the ‘Rot Within’. There was never a place in Islam for clergy or for paid middlemen between the creator and the creation. Organized clergy came long after the death of prophet Mohammad, and the sole purpose of creating it was to control the thought process.

    Koran incites people to think and explore while the perverts: these self proclaimed custodians of Islam want us to do the opposite. The prophet says, “acquire knowledge at any cost” while they want to stop it at any cost.

    History of religions is rife with clergy preventing questioning of doctrines and curbing research. This is a fight that has gone on for centuries and will continue. It is upon us, the common people who have had the privilege of education, to bring out the truth. The change is coming. We have to keep at it.

  2. David T. Gray on October 6th, 2008 8:50 pm

    1. I am sure that if the Rev Falwell were still alive he would be ascribing responsibility for whatever he perceives as “against the precepts in the Bible” for hidden “gay meanings” in the image of Pokemon.

    2. We Americans have a similar Religious Reich in operation that can justify anything…environmental degradation, torture, war, cheating, stealing, illicit sexual behavior that THEY have ordained as illicit by their OWN words but are participating in, ignoring poverty (which is the most prominent word mentioned in the Bible!), racial prejudice, gun laws that equate hunting with the possession of an AK-47, denial of the global climate crisis, acceptance of the barbarity that transpired at Abu Graib & is STILL occurring in Guantanamo Prison, privatization of any asset/business/fund without ANY oversight or regulation, rank corruption/bribery/coercion such as was practiced by Jack Abramoff & Tom DeLay and above an inviolable cult of patriarchal domination of the followers that is built upon the submission of women to their superior male partners.

    3. The connection between the Religious Reich in America and the Fundamentalist Muslim movement is both striking and undeniable and it bodes poorly for the freedoms that are enjoyed or sought out by the rest of the world,

    4. The only solution to this problem is EXPOSURE, since many people do not know or BELIEVE that these extremist points of view could germinate in so-called bastions of democracy. But, most assuredly they do. The second part of the solution is a concerted effort to discover, apprehend, prosecution and conviction of these agents of tyranny. This will take a global police force that is just now beginning to take shape.

    5. This police force was postponed by the egregious move of the Bush Administration & Democratic enablers who invaded Iraq for the purpose of installing a democracy at the point of a bayonet and plundering that precarious nation of its oil wealth, its male population, its heath care infrastructure and it meager means of self-sufficiency. It was replaced by a rapacious horde of war profiteers protected by the lowest form of a financed mercenary army to enable ANY country targeted to be bled dry and then abandoned. This is a perfected form of global parasitization.

  3. liz burbank on October 6th, 2008 10:19 pm

    Anwaar,
    Why not also indict judeo-christian reactionary anti-science fundamentalism’s impact on in ‘advanced’ imperialist nations? When science is in the hands of brutal capitalist states, its uses serve the reactionary interests of that state.

    More subtle, but just as deadly, the sneaky effort to make rational science and the irrational superstition called religion compatible needs exposure!

    liz

  4. Albert Krauss on October 7th, 2008 12:32 am

    My dear “co-fulminator” :)

    Thank you for that list of idiotic notions representing the present day state of /Muslim innovation and creative thought.

    That is not tongue in cheek, your catalog is truly informative, I would not have begun to find these materials.

    To reinforce the strange way we are on the same “fulminative” track, here is something I was inspired to write this morning after reading about Obama’s problems winning support in certain parts of the benighted land of America. The subliminal parallel should be apparent, although the word count is infinitesimal.

    You call it racism? I call it hillbilly white trashism. Those culturally and genetically impoverished groups should be disenfranchised and re-educated, and their children removed to liberal safe havens.

    That’s about all there is to say, of, by, and for them.

    May their little flaggies burn in war and hell.

  5. Anwaar on October 7th, 2008 8:22 am

    Thank you everyone.

    Liz, I didn’t intend to write on the judeo-christian reactionary anti-science fundamentalism in this piece. This one was specifically meant for the the Muslim world’s decline in sciences. And any way, the Western World’s reactionary forces are so ineffective that despite the venom they keep spewing every now and then, West still has reached the astounding heights in science that it has.

    In his recent piece in Dawn, Irfan Hussain has summed it up more succinctly. This is what he surmises;

    “More and more, Muslim societies are being seen as intolerant, violent and irrational. And more and more, Muslims around the world seem determined to prove their detractors right. Instead of introspection and self-analysis, we are forever condemning the rest of the world for our plight, our isolation and our image. This paranoia feeds our perpetual state of self-righteous indignation”

    I AGREE.

  6. Anwaar on October 8th, 2008 8:17 pm

    And one more thing Liz.

    You would not see many Muslims commenting on this thread. You see we are eternally hooked onto blaming others for our failures. Even in this piece they would find a Zionist conspiracy.

    Did you ever notice that on all topics vital to the being of Pakistan in particular and Islamic nationhood at large, the one conspicuous factor is the absence of a Muslim comment? Either they are too scared to comment or they are past caring.

    What more proof do you want of our apathy Liz?

  7. Umesh Rudrapatna on October 11th, 2008 2:26 am

    Dear Anwaar,
    I am glad to see such a bold article and I congratulate you for the same. However, I beg to differ from you on one usage, and that is associating science with religion (since, a naive person could find it misleading) (e.g. Muslim science/Christian science etc).

    It would have been apt here to use it as Science in the Muslim world, since that is exactly the issue you are trying to address, as far as I see, and I don’t think you are advocating a religious race, as mirrored by scientific achievements.

    Tomorrow, if Iran produces a nuclear bomb, will it stand as a testimony to the greatness of Islam, and hence run counter to your own article? By that yardstick, every possible achievement on every front could be associated with a religion. This is indirectly true (in spirit), but not directly (in form). In fact, at the level of spirit, every religion is one and the same, and science is no exception. So, in my opinion, it would have been better to point out that Scientific spirit could flourish in the Islamic world from 900-1200 AD and ponder as to what prevented it from happening later.

    I wish you the very best in your endeavors on the important task of getting people to think on these issues.

  8. Anwaar on October 11th, 2008 4:17 am

    Thank you for a very astute comment Umesh.

    I wholly agree with your observation when you say “It would have been apt here to use it as Science in the Muslim world”. At the same time I fail to see where the article slipped up.

    The article starts with the words “The Muslim World stayed at the pinnacle of glories in science and technology” and finishes with the words “the state of mind of the elites of the Islamic world”, just as you suggest.

    Or perhaps I am not quite seeing it from your perspective.

  9. Anwaar on October 11th, 2008 11:27 am

    Oh, I finally got it Umesh. You are most probably referring to the following sentence;

    “Muslim science bloomed in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba, among other cities.”

    You are right. The error is corrected. I was careless with the choice of words. Science does not have a religion, people do.

    Will be careful next time. Thanks for pointing out the error.

  10. Syed Waris Ali on October 13th, 2008 8:12 am

    No faith but only its followers can be undermined.
    We may call it Dark Age for the followers of Islamic faith. Enlightenment will begin with writings like these. The previous ones enlighten every new world. It has been the cycle of history and has never been static.

  11. Ali Intikhab Raza on October 15th, 2008 5:19 am

    Dear Anwar:

    The first comment on this thread was from a muslim unless you, like many muslims in Pakistan, also consider me an infidel.

    Fear has been the most effective tool in the hands of clergy to curb questioning and to control thought process. The mullah has instilled the fear of “Wrath of God” in the muslim mind to an extent that they are afraid even to think about what you are saying.

  12. Jeff KHAN on October 20th, 2008 9:50 pm

    This was bound to happen. Ok, muslims have been master in destroying islam, but still we can not negelect the role played by anti-islam forces either. AND THE REASON FOR THAT IS VERY SIMPLE: Islam is anti some the biggest money maker pilars in capitalism:
    1 The rent: how could huges wealths have been made without it? Not to mention the ability to control the world today?
    2 The alchol industry. I do not know how much money and jobs are in it, but you must agree there gigantic sums we are talking about here.
    3 Gambling industry. Do i need to specify anything about it here?
    4 The porn and bordell industry and the money involved in it.
    5 Not to mention the natural weath many muslim contries are sitting on.
    Can you think a world withoput these? How much the world would have losed? And how much the captalistic world would have gained if all muslim joined in all this? In sum how it shall be done, other than makinf muslims leaving islam?

    So there are reasons for islams laying behind. That does not mean that we shall sit there and do nothing. ON THE CONTERERY. I only wanted to mention the enemies opposing islam are bigger and stronger than we can imagane.
    I only wish there was a 6th pilar in islam. The one that made the duty of every muslims to be political. Be aware of his society`s and country`s plight. As it is his duty to pray 5 times a day. Then we would have not been that far behind.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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