Does it matter which party wins the elction in the US?

The fact is that in Obama, America has a leader, better than any alternate but a man who is obsessed with wining ( the elections) more than doing what America needs. The foreign policy and economic tsunami of the Bush era needed a man capable of reversing almost all his policies and asking for at least 8 years to revive America from its near fatal illness. Instead he has taken an almost apologetic route to reluctantly doing away with Bushes mistakes. First he decided to continue with the Afghan war after being paralyzed for six months, and now he is in a daze about raising taxes from the rich, while the States are going bankrupt. Even his great medical reforms were compromised so badly that they will go down in history as a non event.
Obama is criticized for being white from inside, a black man, intimidated by all the whites around him but I now wonder if he is not yellow inside. His hopeful admirers who for 8 years watched in horror as Bush delivered punishing body blows to the might and prestige of America , are now having to watch another four years of insipid leadrship before the Republicans return to finish the job which George started.
Perhaps only one thing can be said in defense of Obama, There is only a cosmetic difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Over these superficialities they are willing to slaughter one another. Does it really matter who is in charge?

Literalism and Islam

One has to separate Islam from the way Muslims practice it. Within Islam are many many things which were intended to be evolutionary and thus not frozen in time or to be taken literally. These have to do with worldly matters ( Huquq Ul Muamelat). The spirit of Islam ( Huquq ul Ibadat) is non negotiable and all worldly matters must be guided by this spirit.
There is and there needs to be greater flexiblity within Fiqh if it is ever to be taken seriously by other than literalists.
In matters of relations with non Muslims, Muslim majorities have a duty to protect their minorities and allow them the freedom to practice their own faith. Muslim Minorities have to be faithful to the law of the land in which they reside. India and Pakistan are very poor examples of the way they deal with their minorities. While the Ottomans were very fair to their minorities, these same minorities turned against them when the Ottoman empire crumpled. The Europeans are quite concerned about their Muslim minorities becoming the majority in time. Saudi Arabia and Israel are downright abusive towards their minorities.
The Muslims do not practice their religion well when it comes to dealing with non Muslims and are in need of reform but they are part of a bigger and more global issue. The US is a good example of how it deals with its minorities inside its borders but a terrible example of how it deals with Muslims world wide.
Khusro

The quality of your life

The quality of your life would be judged not by the status that you were able to achieve or the praises that you gathered during your life but by how long was the affect of your deeds after your were no more.

Reading the Quran

Muslims have to come to grips with the thought that a total literal reading of the Quran is neither possible nor desirable.

The white backlash on Obama's Presidency

Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.” Glen Beck right wing TV compere.



Beck represents the paranoia of the whites. A take over of America by non whites who will then seek revenge of abuses inflicted on them by the whites. The scenario that he has painted is exactly what the whites have been doing to the blacks. Their worst nightmare is what if the tables were turned.

Many Americans have not been able to get over the election of a black man as President of America. They are futher horrified by the fact that this black man has Hussain as his middle name. The call is out there to take back " America", to stop the immigrants, to put Muslims in their place. What will they think of next a black President, a Mexican Vice President and a Muslim Secretary of State ( Fareed Zakaria) and all these people will be waited on by white cheauffers, secretaries and doormen. Remember the days when blacks did not even have the right to vote and further back when they were mercillessly whipped for even looking at you in the eye.

Now Blacks and Muslims are claiming America as their own, they are going out there and getting killed for the homeland and they are asking for equal opportunity. It was bad enough accepting Jews and Catholics as humans but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Even if there was a need to import a wolf killing woman from Alsaka ( Sara Palin) to lead the charge, it has to be done. This November is the time when the rabbles must show their colour ( white).

Invited to this party are all non blacks who through years have developed an inferiority complex and assume that the reason that they are trodden upon is because God made the whites superior and created non whites to be trodden upon. After all look at the state of the blacks and the Muslims today. This must be the reason that they are weak and helpless. Bring back Religion, says Beck. Let us mobilise God to redress what nature intended, apartheid.

Khusro

Objectivity in History takes a long time.

In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, Churcill experienced, fleetingly, an instant of doubt. He realized that the local population was fighting back because of “the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own,” just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead that they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill.”

Hitler might have been recorded as a great man, had he succeeded in conquering Europe and his historians were incharge. Over time History is able to see what people living in the moment are unable to see. Dearly held principles and universal values are trampled with ease when peoples emotions are roused.
In todays world the American propoganda machine has blinded most people including Americans , to a gross violation of their own principles and blatant double standards based on racism. The British Empire and the American Empire will leave their own contributions towards the good of humanity without meaning to but these contributions will not include a respect for other peoples freedom, human rights or a belief in Democracy for that matter.

Khusro

If Pakistan is detroyed, who loses?

The Pakistan story has become very complicated recently. It is one of the largest masses of population in the world, that has been on the verge of collapsing for some time. The US has played a major role both in the instability that Pakistan is facing as well as holding it all together.
If hell breaks loose in Pakistan, as it will, India has the most to be concerned about. It has 200 million Muslims who are the "blacks" of India. It also has a large number of desperately poor and fair number of disenfranchised and militant dissidents. The fact that Pakistan is lurching from one crisis to another should be a cause of great concern for the whole world. The question is no longer, who is to blame. The Pakistan Army, the US, India, Saudi Arabia all share in the blame. The question is can Pakistan be stabilised or will it become another Iran. Slowly but surely Pakistan is inching towards a revolution which will be very bloody.

Islam and America

The nine eleven incident created an unprecedented interest in Islam both amongst Muslims and non Muslims. It appears to be a fruit that keeps giving. Now nine years after the incident, it has given rise to another debate on Islam, that about building a mosque, two blocks away from ground zero. It was also the trigger that created the Iraq and Afghan wars, which have had their own long term implications.

The unintended results of Osama's actions may come as a surprise to him, if he is alive. History will remember the date as some sort of a turning point, certainly for Islam.

One aspect of this discussion is how Muslims have gained a toehold in America and are beginning to thrive in an environment that is more Islamic than what they have been able to create in their own homelands.

The 1900 mosques that have mushroomed in the US are just the tip of an emerging iceberg, if one sees what is happening in the UK. Those Americans who watch this with a lot of concern are rightly alarmed given the distorted view of Islam in the media. One thing unique to America is the interest amongst blacks in Islam. What started as a separate religion ( black Muslims) is now merging itself into mainstream Islam. The Muslim congressmen are currently black but perhaps better versed in Islam than people from Muslim countries. In fact many of the more influential Muslims in America are converts and are likely to be other Muslims born and brought up in America.

The unrecognised story so far is how America and Islam are a perfect fit.

Khusro

Is the US a good partner forPakistan and Afghanistan?

As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.
(Comment on this story.)


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.html#ixzz0vZoLtWra

In many ways the western press is doing a great service to the plight of women in Third world countries by publicising the shabby and inhuman way that they are treated. The Taliban are not alone in these practices which are to be found in the breadth of India and Pakistan and in many many African countries, but then no one is making out a case for attacking Pakistan to free the women there.

It is clearly not the motivation of the Western media to uplift conditions of women in these countries, they just need to find a justification for Western armed forces being in Afghanistan, but reading these stories one comes away with the impression that America has nothing else in mind than to protect Afghani women from their men. It would not be difficult to find quite disturbing pictures of American women who are victims of domestic violence here in the US, but no one is rushing to put them on the cover of Time magazine. Domestic violence in America is quite bad and on the increase. In fact victims of domestic violence are not simply maimed but are more likely to be killed. The statistics say that every 21 days a woman is killed as a result of domestic violence in the US. My point is not to justify the poor treatment of women by people in third world countries but the idea that men are any more civilized in the US after having gone to college than the Taliban in Afghanistan who have never even gone to school, is delusions of grandeur.

Leaving aside the similarities of behaviour, there is a valid point that the law of the land should prosecute such behaviour rather than sanction it. In this matter the people in Afghanistan need a lot of laws to create an orderly and just society with or without the Taliban. Clearly the people who can help in doing this is not the US who have proven to have a great propensity for destroying nations than rebuilding them. This is truly the point, the Afghans need help but the US is not the white knight that can do this. In fact any one but the US would be good.
I am no fan of Karzai but even he has arrived at the conclusion that he is in bed with the wrong partner. The question that is being raised in the US constantly is whether Karzai and Pakistan are the right partners, is also the question that is being raised in Afghanistan and Pakistan, does the US have the interest of their people in mind?

Khusro