to question the unexplained wrongs
beliefs blinded by aeons of
superstitions
prejudices
and religions

Faith of the Heart

a song written by Diane Warren
originally performed by Rod Stewart for the soundtrack of the 1998 film Patch Adams
also the opening soundtrack for “Enterprise” – the Star Trek prequel

sung here by Russel Watson.

It’s been a long road
Getting from there to here
It’s been a long time
But my time is finally near

And I can feel the change in the wind right now
Nothing’s in my way
And they’re not gonna hold me down no more
No they’re not gonna hold me down

‘Cause I’ve got faith of the heart
I’m going where my heart will take me
I’ve got faith to believe
I can do anything
I’ve got strength of the soul
And no one’s gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I’ve got faith, I’ve got faith, faith of the heart

It’s been a long night
Trying to find my way
Been through the darkness
Now I’ve finally have my day

And I will see my dream come alive at last
I will touch the sky
And they’re not gonna hold me down no more
No they’re not gonna change my mind

I’ve known the wind so cold, and seen the darkest days.
But now the winds I feel, are only winds of change.
I’ve been through the fire and I’ve been through the rain.
But I’ll be fine.

It’s been a long road.

the dust has settled,
so has the shock, the anger, the grief – and the emotional voices

let us go back to what did happen
on a weekday morning at 08:40 at a busy roundabout in Lahore Pakistan
12/14 individual – fired automatic weapons – launched grenades
and escaped ON FOOT, unhurt and remains undetected

I read Chris Broads narration of events:

Broad fury at Pakistan security

Source: ESPN Star | Wednesday 4th March 2009

Broad, who expressed fears for his security before the start of the tour, said at a press conference: “I am angry at the Pakistani security forces.” He added: “We were promised high level security and in our hour of need that security vanished and they left us to be sitting ducks.“

Broad continued: “I had an inkling before the Test match leg of the tour that something might happen. “I raised my concerns with the ICC before the tour started and they passed on those concerns to the Pakistan Cricket Board and they assured me through email that all security would be taken care of, presidential-style security. And clearly that didn’t happen.

“When we were in the van we weren’t aware of what was going on outside. But afterwards when you watch the TV pictures you can clearly see the white van we were in, in the middle of a roundabout and not a sign of a policeman anywhere.”

and I also read these reports – duplicated on multiple websites

‘Anonymous call led police to change route of SL team’s bus’

Source: TOI | 4 Mar 2009, 1313 hrs IST, PTI

LAHORE: A last minute call by an unidentified person led the city police to change the route of the bus taking the Sri Lankan cricket team to Gaddafi stadium here, a Pakistan media report said on Wednesday.

An unknown caller asked police escorting the Sri Lankan team to use the Gulberg route leading to the stadium instead of travelling along Ferozpur road as had been decided earlier, The News daily quoted interior ministry sources as saying. Police followed the caller’s instructions without ascertaining his identity, the report said. This led to the police falling into a “trap”, the sources said.

I do not believe any policeman regardless of how dumb or stupid he maybe
would change routes unless he knew the authority of the caller

the best form of protection would have been for the two teams to travel together
the ultimate human shields
so where were the
Pakistani players!

Younis says Pakistan team lucky to escape attack

Source: reuters UK | Tue Mar 3, 2009 2:32pm GMT

LAHORE (Reuters) – Pakistan captain Younis Khan said his team were lucky to escape the attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus Tuesday.

“Thank God we decided to leave our hotel five minutes after the Sri Lankans” Younis told a news conference. “We are a young team and God forbid if both buses had been moving together it could have been catastrophic.”

in the last minute the route was changed
in the last minute the Pakistan team decided to travel separately

just luck?

Pakistan team avoid attack thanks to late change of plan

Source: Guardian UK | Tuesday 3 March 2009 13.09 GMT

Pakistan’s cricketers came within a whisker of being caught up in the terrorist attack in Lahore this morning and owed their near-miss to a last-minute change of plan, according to the team’s coach. Intikhab Alam said that the captain, Younis Khan, decided not to leave for the stadium at the same time as the Sri Lankans as they had previously.

According to Alam, both teams usually departed together at about 8:40am, but that did not happen this morning. “The Sri Lankans decided to leave five minutes early today and our captain had decided we would go separately,” he said.

I find that very hard to believe.

This was a pre-planned and well executed ambush.
The timing had to right,
the target too had to be precise – the Pakistani players could not be touched.

The Pakistan team must have been held back by someone who knew -
so sending the Sri lankans alone into the ambush – they had been the intended target.

What the killers did not account for,
the grenades missing the bus or rolling under unexploded,
the driver of the bus would be alive and be able to drive the bus to safety.

Terrorists turn guns on cricket in Pakistan, a nation at war with itself

Source: Times Online | March 4, 2009

Pakistani officials have already suggested that the attack bore the hall-marks of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group believed responsible for the siege of tourist hotels in Mumbai.

CCTV footage showed the gunmen, like the Mumbai attackers, working in pairs, armed with assault rifles and grenades in backpacks. But they also carried rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a weapon of choice in the Afghan and Pakistan tribal areas. Their escape, melting into the Pakistani city least hospitable to Islamist extremism, will raise fresh and disturbing questions about their links to the security and intelligence services.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of several militant groups created by Pakistan’s powerful Inter Services Intelligence to battle Indian rule in Kashmir.

The attacks on Mumbai and Lahore are classic “fedayin” assaults – suicidal rather suicide – taught in Lashkar’s training camps by ISI officers. What Pakistan experienced in Lahore was the backlash, deepening the sense of crisis confronting the flailing civilian Government.

If I take you back to Chris Broad’s remark that,

“we were in the middle of a roundabout and not a sign of a policeman anywhere.”

does it all seem coincidental?
not to me, it does not.

on a weekday morning at 08:40 at a busy roundabout in Lahore Pakistan
12/14 individual – fired automatic weapons – launched grenades
and escaped ON FOOT, unhurt and remains undetected

there was no presidential-style security
forget military guards or armed convoys
there is no report that the terrorists had been fired back upon,
no bodies,
no DNAs,
any possibility that they could be IDENTIFIED, DEAD OR ALIVE, like in Mumbai – had been excluded

Referee in deadly Pakistan ambush says police fled

Source: Associated Press | By RIZWAN ALI – 04 March 2009

On Wednesday, new video from a surveillance camera broadcast on local TV showed several attackers apparently escaping along a deserted side street on motorcycles while carrying weapons. Three were also shown walking down the middle of the street, apparently in no hurry, indicating they did not believe police were in the area or hunting them down.

“They were not under pressure … nobody was firing at them,” said team captain Mahela Jayawardene said.

Someone in Pakistan Military or the ISI
I clarify NOT the President or elected government -
but the pro-Taliban element in their military knew or authorised this attack.

I truly feel sorry
for the policemen, and their friends and family,
who gave their lives for the Sri Lankan players – for they were the intended collateral loss

cricketterrorismpakistan

first it was the Foreign Secretary David Milliband’s gutless statements on Kashmir.
now it is Home Secretary Jacqui Smith

as the nations economy worsens,
and the evidence of their disastrous handling of the economy continues to surface
the more they have to rely on the muslim votebank to get themselves back into power
selling the rights and freedom of everyone else…

Dutch party chief barred from UK

Financial Times | Published: February 11 2009 00:45
By Michael Steen in Amsterdam

Britain has taken the unusual step of banning a Dutch member of parliament from entering the country due to his stridently anti-Islamic views, prompting the Dutch government to protest. Geert Wilders, who heads the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, had been due to travel to London on Thursday for a screening of his film, Fitna, organised by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a eurosceptic peer. The film criticises Islam, one of Mr Wilders’ main targets.

The Dutch foreign ministry said it “deeply regretted the decision by the British government to deny Party for Freedom leader Wilders entry to the country”. Mr Wilders told Dutch television he had received a letter from the British Embassy in The Hague informing him of a decision by Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, to bar him for public security reasons.

To be clear, his film Fitna is to be screened in the Palace of Westminster.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders deported after flying to Britain to show anti-Islamic film

Telegraph UK | Last Updated: 6:19AM GMT 13 Feb 2009
By Christopher Hope, John Bingham and Bruno Waterfield

Geert Wilders had been invited to Westminster to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a “fascist book”, by a member of the House of Lords.

But on Tuesday Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary refused Mr Wilders entry because his opinions “would threaten community security and therefore public security” in the UK. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said Holland would press for a reversal of the travel ban.

Earlier on the flight, Mr Wilders had launched a savage attack on the Government. He said: “They (the British Government) are the biggest bunch of cowards in Europe. “I’m coming because I am invited by one of your members of parliament. I’m not provocative. I am an elected political representative. I am a democrat. I use my freedom of speech. I am using all the democratic means I have.”

Mr Wilders had been due to attend a screening of Fitna, organised by Ukip peer Lord Pearson, in the Lords. Lord Pearson said the screening would go ahead yesterday “with or without Mr Wilders”. In a joint statement, he and cross-bench peer Baroness Cox said they were “promoting freedom of speech” and accused the Government of “appeasing” militant Islam.

They added: “Geert Wilders’ Fitna film, available on the web, is not a threat to anyone. It merely suggests how the Koran has been used by militant Islamists to promote and justify their violence. “They react in fury and menace to our intention to show the film and have boasted that their threats of aggressive demonstrations prevented its previous showing in the Mother of Parliaments.”

… and so the pandering for muslim votes in Britain will continue.
biggest bunch of cowards in Europe – I totally agree.

as for the non-sloppy-thinking sanctimonious readers,
the next election in britain has to be completed by 3rd June 2010

british general electionmuslim+votebank

previous articles in the british mp series:
british mp’s support for islamic terrorism

would you live in an Islamic Caliphate,
the global state that will be ruled under the Sharia Law?
the one Islamic Caliphate, that every muslims desires, yes, everyone of them,
for it is dictated by their religion.

Islam is a religion of peace, it is argued by the muslims.

then there also are many non-muslims voices,
loud in their ignorance who only would like to be seen as “liberals”
while for many unfortunates, born and living in the wrong world region, it will be all too late.

an allegation from the Indian Ahmadiyya community

Ahmadi children arrested on false charges in Pakistan

In persecution.org | Punjab News Online
Maqbool Ahmad Wednesday, 11 February 2009

QUADIAN: Ahmadiyya Muslim community in India spokesman Mohammad Nasim Khan said in a press release that five members of its community residing in Chak 172/TDA, District Layyah, Pakistan have been arrested and charged under Section 295-C of the Pakistani Penal Code. In a grave blow to any standards of decency, four of the accused are children studying at the English language ‘Superior Academy’ private school. Under the terms of Section 295-C any person found guilty is subject to either the death penalty or life imprisonment.

The four accused children are Muhammad Irfan, Tahir Imran, Tahir Mahmood and Naseeb Ahmad. There are conflicting reports regarding the exact age of the children however according to both the ‘AHRC’ and ‘The Daily Times’ their ages range between 14 and 16. Mr Mubashar Ahmad, aged 50, has also been arrested under section 295-C.

All five were taken into custody on 28 January 2009 by virtue of a police raid on each of their homes. After four hours in custody each of the accused was charged under the terms of section 295-C on the completely false grounds that they had written the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) on the walls of a toilet at the Jamia Gulzar-e-Medina Mosque.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat urges the immediate release of the five persons imprisoned and for all charges to be dropped. In a country which seeks to promote an image of tolerance to the Western world, it speaks volumes that peace loving children have been charged with an offence that sanctions the death penalty as a sentence.

this is one of the many news feeds on this event

Presumed guilty five Ahmadis arrested in Punjab for blasphemy

Qaiser Felix – in Asia News 02/13/2009 17:47

Lahore (AsiaNews) – Five Ahmadi in Punjab’s Layyah district have been arrested on charges of blasphemy. No evidence has been presented, nor has any witness come forth. They were just detain on a “presumption of guilt,” this according to Asma Jahangir, chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and United Nations Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion. For this reason she has called on the government to take prompt measures to prevent abuses of the law.

For Islamic fundamentalists the Ahmadis are a heretical sect that cannot claim to be Muslim because they do not recognise Muhammad as the final prophet. Because of this they have suffered persecution in Pakistan but also in Bangladesh and Indonesia.

This particular incident began when five Ahmadi students, who had been duly authorised to pray in the local mosque, were told not to come back to the holy place. With such a threat hanging over their heads, the five men were accused ten days later of scribbling offensive graffiti on the walls of the mosque’s bathroom. According to the official complaint filed against them, since they were the only non-Muslims in the mosque, “only they could be responsible for the offence.”

the eternal price of not being muslims in an Islamic republic – to be “guilty by presumption”.

but does the world care about the Ahmadis?

2005.

Pakistan: Killing of Ahmadis continues amid impunity

AI Index: ASA 33/028/2005 (Public) | News Service No: 271
Public Statement – Amnesty International: 11 October 2005

Police investigations of previous targeted killings of Ahmadis in Pakistan have been slow or have not taken place at all. In many cases the perpetrators have not been brought to justice. Amnesty International believes that the government’s consistent failure to investigate attacks and killings of members of religious minorities fails to discourage further human rights abuses against such groups. The right to freedom of religion, as laid down in the Pakistani constitution and in international human rights law, must be made a reality for all religious minorities in Pakistan.

Over the years Amnesty International has been informed of numerous targeted killings of Ahmadis, usually carried out with impunity. In some cases, the targeted Ahmadis themselves were subjected to criminal charges. In one incident in October 2000, eight Ahmadis were murdered in the village of Ghatialian, Sialkot district, in an incident similar to that of 7 October 2005.

In October 2000 gunmen opened fire on Ahmadis while they were gathered at a mosque for worship. Five Ahmadis who witnessed the attack and reported the incident to the police, along with 21 other Ahmadis, were arrested and many of them are still serving life sentences for what Amnesty International believes to be false charges. None of the gunmen were ever arrested or brought to justice.

A report by the Amnesty International
of the mockery of Human Rights of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

2007

And then there was from the Human Rights Watch:

Pakistan: Pandering to Extremists Fuels Persecution of Ahmadis

Government Must Repeal ‘Blasphemy Law’ and End Persecution of Religious Minority
Human Rights Watch | May 5, 2007

The Pakistani government should stop pandering to Islamist extremist groups that foment harassment and violence against the minority Ahmadiyya religious community, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch called on the government of President General Pervez Musharraf to repeal laws that discriminate against religious minorities such as the Ahmadis, including the penal statute that makes capital punishment mandatory for “blasphemy.”

The persecution of the Ahmadiyya community is wholly legalized, even encouraged, by the Pakistani government. Pakistan’s penal code explicitly discriminates against religious minorities and targets Ahmadis in particular by prohibiting them from “indirectly or directly posing as a Muslim.” Ahmadis are prohibited from declaring or propagating their faith publicly, building mosques, or making the call for Muslim prayer.

Pakistan’s “Blasphemy Law,” as Section 295-C of the Penal Code is known, makes the death penalty mandatory for blasphemy. Under this law, the Ahmadi belief in the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is considered blasphemous insofar as it “defiles the name of Prophet Muhammad.”

This is February 2009

where is the voice of the “moderate muslims”?

SITUATION IN DISTRICT LAYYAH WORSENS

In persecution.org | Punjab News Online
Maqbool Ahmad Wednesday, 10 February 2009

Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamat spokesman Mohammad Nasim Khan said in a press release today that the Human Rights situation of its members in District Layyah, Pakistan is worsening. The five Ahmadis, who include four children, arrested on 28 January 2009 remain in police custody. They are not being allowed to meet with any persons, in direct contravention to the provisions laid forth in Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Pakistan is party.

In a further worrying move the local Mullahs have announced that a large scale rally will be held at Chak TDA/172 in opposition to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat. It is more than likely that this event will be used to incite hatred against the Jamaat and to urge people to act against Ahmadis. The organisers of this event are inviting people from nearby cities such as Dera Isamael Khan and Muzafergarh to take part in this rally. The local authorities and police are seriously concerned about the event which they fear they will be unable to control.

Ahmadi Muslims throughout the world are urged to write to their local media and officials in protest of what is happening in District Layyah. The International Community is once again urged to take immediate action.

where are the loud mouth noseycows?

ahmadiyyaspakistanislamic caliphate

Previous articles in this series:
in an islamic caliphate: would you live in one
in an islamic caliphate: what rights the Zarminas?

i stumbled back on this song from the

flower power days
when some had the courage to stand up and say no more to violence
when to bring change needed courage and sacrifice
not the sanctimonious voices

younger generation – john sebastian at woodstock

why must every generation think they’re folks are square
and no matter where they’re heads are, they know mom’s aint there.
cause’ I swore when I was small, that I’d remember when
i knew what’s wrong with them that I was smaller then

determined to remember all the cardinal rules
like sunshowers are legal grounds for skipping school
i know I have forgotten maybe one or two
and I hope that I recall them all before the baby’s due
and I’ll know he’ll have a question or two

like hey pop can I go ride my zoom
it goes twohundred miles an hour, suspended on balloons
and can I put a droplet of this new stuff on my tongue
and imagine frothing dragons, while you sit and wreck your lungs
and I must be permissive understanding of the younger generation

and then I know that all I’ve learned my kid assumes
and all my deepest worries must be his cartoons
and still I’ll try to tell him all the things I’ve done
relating to what he can do when he becomes a man
and still he’ll stick his fingers in the fan

and hey pop my girlfriend’s only three
she’s got her own bitty phone
and she is taking lsd
and now that we’re best friends she want’s to give a taste of me
but whats the matter daddy how come you’re looking mean
can it be that you can’t live up to your dreams

40 years and more has gone by, do we even care
what kind of a world we leave behind for the future generations
a world where they still will have to fight for their equal rights, if any at all

not one we can be proud of

[flowerpower: 1967 photograph of George Edgerly Harris III by Bernie Boston]

yes, I write against a religion that
denies the equality and the fundamental rights of every human individual,
denies the freedom to practise any religion other than its own

my views on such religion on this blogs have been criticised

it has also brought criticism of my personal self
a few week ago I was asked by someone calling herself noseycow

If you are a physician, how do you reconcile your intense hatred of any Muslim with your oathe to give each INDIVIDUAL patient your best care?

This is how, noseycows

An incident known to only three individuals; unreported untold –
till now.

I had finished my rotation of senior housejobs and had entered the postgraduate surgical residency. Of the many speciality I had worked through in my rotation, I had come to like paediatric surgery the most.

A speciality not sought after by the young surgical aspirants in the 80s. As with many others, the department was underfunded and understaffed. Led by a consultant dedicated to his work, but not supported by the management. Since starting my residency, I had volunteered many of my off duty hours to work in his wards, scrub up with him in the theatre; for no reason other than it gave a meaning to my life at the time.

I was no longer on the paediatric surgery rota, when one night on my way back from a callout to one of my own patients I was stopped by a wardboy with a callbook. There were no pagers in our hospital in those days. Doctors were called for emergencies by handwritten messages in a ‘call book’, the ‘wardboys’ were sent out to find the doctors in their usual hideouts. The outcome of the emergencies relying how quickly the wardboys could track down the doctors.

That night there was an emergency in the paediatric surgical ward. The houseman needed help, he was too scared to call the consultant at home. He had sent out the ‘callbook’ to me in desperation. Not realising I was no longer in paediatrics and the list on the wall was long outdated.

It was well after midnight. but I have never refused a call.
I went up to the ward. There was an infant, a girl with intestinal obstruction in a state of shock. She was desperately ill, but we had no intensive care units in the hospital.

The houseman was new, on a rotation from the paediatric department. His instructions from his seniors the evening before was to try and resuscitate the child. An emergency operation had been booked for the next morning, provided the child survived the night and was accepted for theatre by the anaesthetists.

And if blood for transfusion could be made available.
Getting blood for transfusion was always the responsibility of the patients’ ‘party’. The parents, the friends, the relatives or the children; whoever would be around for the doctor to hand over the sample and the requisition slip. This little girl only had her parents.

We were the only hospital in the city with a nationalised bloodbank. But they had run out of stocks of her bloodgroup as they claimed. The option left was for the parents to donate themselves or to buy units from one of the many privatised bloodbanks.

The young parents were very poor, from a rural district of Bengal they knew no one in the city. They had somehow scraped the railfare to come to the city hospital. To buy even a single unit of blood was beyond their means. In those days I was no richer and even had I wanted to, I could not offer them any money.

Would they donate themselves?
No, the mother thought it would kill them.
No, the father said it would be against their religion.
They were muslims, they could not be forced to donate nor would they ‘buy’ blood for transfusion.
Their religion came first; they decided to accept the inevitable, they had three other children and the child who was still alive was given up for dead.

The child was the same bloodgroup as I. But I was intensely needlephobic.
The young girl was indeed doomed. Besides it would be a bad precedence if a doctor was to donate his own blood for the treatment of patients.

I do not know what made me go down to the bloodbank and convince the medical officer to be gentle with the needle. One unit of my blood was enough for three baby transfusions. It was not uncommon for rare blood groups to become “lost in transit”, I myself brought them up to the ward with me so it would not go missing and so that no one would know except that houseman of course. I had sworn him to secrecy.

We started transfusing the first unit and still had two more for the theatre. It was almost dawn when I went off to bed. I was too tired to think of the ifs and whys of what I had done.

I was in theatre the next morning with my own unit. My professor called me to say the consultant in the paediatric theatre wanted to see me and I was excused from the rest of our theatre list. My heart sank. I knew it had to do with the incidents of the night. On my way over I thought of various excuses to justify myself.

When I reached, the consultant simply said he had a very sick child he was going to operate on, would I scrub up with him. In relief I agreed. We discussed only the possibilities and prognosis as we scrubbed.

Yes, it was that same little girl.
She had survived the night. And another unit of transfusion had been started.

We prepped and draped the tiny figure in silence. The consultant surprised us all by asking me to swap sides, informed the anaesthetists that I would be the surgeon and for the very first time, handed me the knife.

It was a small gut volvulus, a segment of the intestine was strangulated as was anticipated. I resected it out and anastomosed the healthy ends. Everytime I looked up I saw the blood transfusion trickling in. Only I in that room knew it was my blood.

We did get her safely back to the ward.
As we left the operating theatre, the consultant stopped and shook my hands and thanked me for what I had done the night before. He had known, the house officer had felt compelled to inform him. We never discussed it again.

Whenever I could, I went up to check on the girls progress. I was just another doctor doing a round. One day her bed was empty. She had been discharged home.

I do not know what kind of a life I helped her return to.
I do not know if that little girl survived to even reach her teens.

What I learnt for myself that night was being the doctor we are often the last person who can make that difference between a patient’s life and death. As long as there is a heartbeat, as long as there is an output, it is our responsibility to do everything we can to save that life.

That is how we do it.
That is how I do it, regardless of the race, colour, religion, nationality of my patients.
I have accepted the responsibility, and I am prepared to go beyond the call of duty, everytime.

She would be 24 years old this year.

(I was born to hindu brahmin parents)

i have had the misfortune of being visited by one,
who has tried his/her pathetic best to use a play of words to divert from the point I make

as is a norm on this site,
I bring my response to that comment onto the mainpage,
so that it does not get obscured within the binary…

@ duncanr

you are being fastidious about my usage of the words “election year” because you obviously do not have any other arguments against what I have written.

To make it clear, so it sinks into your “non-sloppy” sanctimonious thinking:
a British PM can call an election at anytime of his term.
Under the provisions of the Septennial Act 1715 as amended by the Parliament Act 1911, the next United Kingdom general election must be held on or before Thursday 3 June 2010 – so Gordon Brown HAS TO call that election within the next 16 months – by 3rd June 2010 to be exact.

It is of no consequence whether 2009 has yet not been declared as “the election year” to the public – David Milliband, an individual with high ambitions of his own political future, himself must know when the election will be held – and when he needs to start “pandering” to the muslim votebanks.

Even with your fastidious diversionary argument – you cannot rule out a call for an election AT ANY TIME WITHIN THE NEXT SIXTEEN MONTHS. And if an election does take place before midnight, 31st December 2009 – consider your butt well and truly kicked.

My perspectives are clear – biased? perhaps.
what you are trying is a clever way of avoiding to declare that muslim perspectives too are deeply biased.

You may call yourself an aethist, I expected you would,
that is the another clever/cheap way of avoiding to declare what religion you were born into.
Declaring yourself an aethist does not exclude any bias in your thinking
it is THE PERFECT WAY of concealing a bias based on religion.

Besides NO ONE born into Islam can ever be an aethist.
Is it not, under the Islamic law (sharia), the male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress and a female apostate must be either executed, or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam.

I stand my ground,
with an election that HAS TO be declared at ANYTIME and CONCLUDED before 3rd JUNE 2010, it is now ESSENTIAL FOR BRITISH MPs TO PANDER TO MUSLIM VOTERS.

Milliband does not dare talk of Israel giving independence to Palestine - he may be a moron, but has just enough neurones to realise that will be the end of his political career. the easy option was to score cheap points by talking Kashmir.

It is ironic,
in the name of democracy, the world has to suffer MPs pandering to a religion to get their votes
when that religion itself does not believe in democracy.

Sloppy thinking? My readers will judge that.
But it has more value than what you dish out day after day on your own website.
It takes a lot more than your diversionary attempts under the pretence of being “fastidious” to try and disprove or discredit what I write.

I do not publish cowardly diversionary arguments here.
Any further arguments that YOU may have – dish them out on your site.

this individual serves his non-sloppy thoughts at a mad tea party
please visit: a display of intelligence as you may never have perceived before

would you live in an Islamic Caliphate,
the global state that will be ruled under the Sharia Law?
the one Islamic Caliphate, that every muslims desires, yes, everyone of them,
for it is dictated by their religion.

The image is a link to a video clip
It has left me with speechless anger since I first saw it on Channel 4.
Do not open if you get upset by violence – this is extremely disturbing.

Public Execution of an Afghan Woman (Zarmeena) by Taliban

Kabul Ghazi Sports Stadium, Nov.16,1999

Movie clips from a video film by RAWA which was aired by Channel 4 (UK)

Every time I see this, I can only think of the state of the woman’s mind when left tied and helpless on the ground, blindfolded, knowing there was to be a bullet through her head.

Look at the spurt of dust where the bullet hits the ground.
A chilling reminder it is not a movie, this is real.

Her crime?
Read the original RAWA text,
RAWA: Revolutionary Association of Women from Afghanistan

ZARMINA’S STORY

The Mirror , June 20, 2002 | From Anton Antonowicz In Kabul

MILLIONS of people have watched this woman die. Yet none saw her face.

Only a handful of people know the real story which led to 35-year-old Zarmina being executed on the penalty spot in Kabul’s Olympic Stadium in Afghanistan.

The image of this mother of five children being driven to her death in a Toyota pick-up for the crime of killing her husband shocked the world. This anonymous woman being dragged across the pitch in front of 30,000 spectators and being made to kneel before the goalposts until the tall, thin Taliban rifleman blew out her brains.

The scene was recorded with a hidden video camera and smuggled into Pakistan by the brave women of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women from Afghanistan. Later, it marked the opening scenes of Beneath the Veil, Channel 4′s award-winning documentary of life inside Afghanistan under the fanatical Taliban.

Here was the truth of life in a nation wracked by 23 years of war yet largely ignored until that day. When the Mirror first published photographs of Zarmina’s death in June last year we were inundated by calls and letters from readers. Few knew of real life under the regime which came to power in 1996.

September 11 changed all that.

But one, simple question remained unanswered.
One which obsessed me from the moment I first saw that secret footage in spring last year. If the claim that Zarmina had murdered her husband was true, what was the desperation, knowing the Taliban’s brutality, which ultimately led her to her death? And what, if anything, did it tell us about the life of women under the fanatics’ yoke?

These were the questions which took me to Afghanistan. To a secret rendezvous. To a filthy prison. To a cemetery. To houses where doors slammed in my face. Where men with guns threatened to kill me if I continued asking questions.

FINALLY, last Friday, a thin airmail letter arrived on my desk, post-marked April 6.

It contained three pages of green biro notes ripped from a school exercise book, confirming details which myself and colleague Tom Newton Dunn discovered during two separate Afghan assignments. It also held a tiny photograph, the size of a thumbnail, from a police file – the face of Zarmina, the woman beneath the veil.

The letter came from a young “fixer” I hired in Kabul. It followed a meeting I had arranged with a woman police inspector who had promised that somehow she would ensure Zarmina’s real story was told. Rana Sayeed works at the central police station in Kabul. It was sheer chance that we first found her on a rain-lashed day in late February standing at the entrance to the women’s jail.

Rana, a mother in her late 40s, appeared different from most Afghan women. She did not wear a burka. Her manner was loud and confident. She spoke of her training as a detective and told how she was sent to Moscow by Afghanistan’s former Soviet puppet regime.

Rana said she had been a police officer for some 20 years. “Even the Taliban needed some women to apply law and order,” she said, suddenly lowering and shaking her head. “Even the Taliban…” She took us across the mud-caked compound into the charred basement of the police HQ.

The room held two desks and one old typewriter. The air was still heavy with the stench of smoke from hundreds of fires the Taliban started in Kabul before they fled. She asked us to wait until her boss gave her clearance. When eventually the newly-appointed chief of Kabul’s police told her to give us every assistance, she began.

“At last Zarmina’s story can be told,” she said. “It is the story of one woman. But it is also the story of Afghan women under the Taliban, under brutes who turned our country into a zoo and our women into dogs. “I thought Zarmina would die when they brought her here. They beat her for two days with steel cables until she confessed.

“But she was a tough one. As she lay on the floor of the cell, she pointed to her one-year-old twins – the girl Silsila and the boy Jawad – and said she would fight for life, fight as the mother of these babies.

“There were other children. Zarmina had a son Hawad, who was 11, and two beautiful daughters Shaista, 14, and Najeba just 16. “It was her love for all of them which drove her to do what she did. The tragedy is that it made life a thousand times worse for them.”

Zarmina, from northern Kabul, was married at 16. It was an arranged union but blossomed into love. She was an attractive, feisty woman. Her Pashtun husband, Alauddin Khwazak, from the village of Paghman an hour’s drive away, was a policeman who also owned a small general store.

It was a marriage which flowered in the face of war and seemed at first to survive the violence in Kabul. But almost imperceptibly, perhaps inevitably, the relationship began to fall apart. Relentless bloodshed changed everyone. And it destroyed Zarmina’s husband. The bombings, mass rapes, and murders brutalised Khwazak’s mind, infecting it with an insidious poison.

A NEIGHBOUR told me: “He had been a mild man but slowly he turned into a monster. Perhaps, as a policeman, he had seen too much. “He’d rage. He became violent. He was mad with jealousy, convinced that Zarmina was seeing other men. It was rubbish. But his head was wrapped in madness.”

When the Taliban took control of Kabul in September, 1996, they effectively handed Khwazak a licence for that madness. For these fundamentalist “students” from the south, Kabul was Satan’s playground. A place where women were allowed to wear miniskirts and attend high school and university. A world of sin.

Women had no rights in Taliban Afghanistan. They existed only to obey. They were drones to bear children, cook and satisfy men. They were lashed for their high heels, had their fingertips amputated for revealing varnish and and were stoned to death for prostitution. Two women charged with adultery were hanged from a crane. A boy of 10 was given a gun to shoot his father’s killer and a girl of seven whipped for wearing white shoes.

Girls were forbidden to attend school and summary justice wrapped in a medieval robe was the creed. Ruthless in pursuit of purity and perfect proof that no crime is too awful if justified by religious belief. Khwazak’s moods matched the new doctrine. His brother, a dour and unforgiving man, hailed the Taliban’s fundamentalism and fed his sibling’s fevered brain.

Rana said: “Khwazak beat his wife every night. He abused her and her elder daughters. I don’t know if there was sexual abuse, but it was something Zarmina could no longer bear. So she plotted with Najeba to kill him. And finally they did it.”

The murder was carried out early one summer night five years ago. Some say Zarmina put opium in Khwazak’s food. Rana says she laced his meal with sleeping pills. As he fell into a drugged sleep Zarmina woke her daughter. Rana said: “She told me that there, at the final moment, she couldn’t do it.”

It was Najeba who took the 10lb mason’s hammer and killed her father with one blow to the head. Rana said: “They ran from the house screaming that robbers had broken in and attacked Khwazak. They said the men were ‘shadows in the night’. “Some believed them, others weren’t so sure. Zarmina’s brother-in-law was the first to accuse and called the Taliban.

“They never found the hammer, but they got their confession. That was all that mattered.

“Zarmina said she was the murderer. That she acted alone. She stuck to that story all the time she was tortured. It was only two years later when she knew me well that she admitted the truth. And I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

ZARMINA was taken to the central jail and held there with her twins for nearly three years. Sometimes her mother would come with food. But she condemned her daughter for bringing shame on all of them and said she hated her. She told Zarmina other women in jail would kill her. Yet it was those prisoners who helped keep her and her children alive.

Rana went on: “They’d give them scraps. I gave her a few blankets. Somehow she stayed alive.
“She was a brave woman and fought desperately against her fears. She told the Taliban she was a mother and that what she’d done was for her children.”

Rana said: “She asked what would happen to her children without a mother? She pleaded with them to lash her and let her go to tend her precious kids. “She had dreams in which her husband appeared. Then she said she knew she would die.”

Zarmina’s elder girls and son were given to her brother-in-law, according to tradition. He was Taliban and demanded blood law refusing to let her escape death. Then, two months before the execution, he told Zarmina’s mother he had sold Najeba and Shaista into sex slavery.

“That nearly killed Zarmina,” said Rana. “Everything she’d done was for her children. Now it had taken her girls to a living hell. “The brother-in-law even made sure she knew the price, 600,000 Pakistani rupees for Najeba and 300,000 for Shaista. Sold to a man from Khost.”

Khost, seven hours south east of Kabul on the Pakistani border, is a name which echoes loud. The city was a Taliban stronghold. The place where al-Qaeda had its main training camp and the tunnels from which Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa to kill Americans and their allies.

“Zarmina beat herself, smashed her head against the jail wall,” said Rana. “Of course her daughters were sold to Taliban, but who? To Afghans? To fanatics? To bin Laden? She knew she’d never see them again.”

Then, on November 15, 1999, the radio announced there would be an execution in two days time. Zarmina knew nothing of this. She had spent nearly three years in jail and knew there would be punishment. But still she convinced herself they would not kill a mother.

EVEN when the guards came for her she said she expected to face 100 lashes, but no more. She put on three dresses – two borrowed – underneath her burka, hoping they would soften the blows. Rana said: “I was ordered to accompany her with two women police officers. “We climbed into the pick-up with her and prayed together. I couldn’t stand it. I left before the truck entered the stadium.

‘And I’ll tell you that after what happened next, those two colleagues never worked again. One had a nervous breakdown. The other is plagued by nightmares to this day.” As the stadium crowd settled, an announcer described what was to happen: “Zarmina, daughter of Ghulam Hasnat, is to be executed for killing her husband with a hammer.”

He falsely said the murder happened “five months ago”. But the truth would not have fitted the Taliban creed of swift justice. The reality was that her execution was delayed until a premium price was haggled and paid for her virgin daughters.

The video takes over. It first shows the Toyota twice circling the pitch, the driver parading his passenger before the spectators. Zarmina, flanked by her two female escorts, sees little. Surgeons in masks stand to one side, ready for amputations which will follow the main event.

The next clip shows the two women guards escorting Zarmina to the goal area. She is told to sit. For the first time, the crowd of men, women and children falls silent. Slowly a tall Taliban steps forward. Zarmina tries to crawl away. What is not shown is the first shot.

The executioner’s hands are shaking. The cries from the crowd to spare Zarmina unnerve him. Officials refuse all pleas for clemency. They claimed there were too many in the crowd who wanted to see death.

The first shot creases Zarmina’s hair telling her at last what her fate would be. Her precious children brought for the spectacle can only stand and stare. Zarmina cries out. She says she cannot sit or kneel without falling. “Someone take my arms,” she pleads.

Her last request went unanswered. The gunman aimed his Kalashnikov again. And Zarmina was dead from a single 7.62mm bullet. The executioner turned away, blood law sated. He was Zarmina’s brother-in-law. The man who sold her precious girls. The man who, Rana is sure, escaped to Pakistan with so many others. A man with money in his pocket.

ZARMINA’S body was taken to the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital. Her body lay unclaimed in the mortuary for 20 days. Her mother, Shah Sultan, refused any responsibility, telling Rana: “She brought shame. She deserved what she got. She is not even a memory to me.”

Zarmina was buried in an unmarked grave 300 yards from her unforgiving mother’s home. Rana took me to the cemetery in Khair Khana, in District 11, north Kabul. She stayed in the car while I tried to find the grave. She said it was safer that way. That locals might object to her being in the company of foreign men. The gravediggers denied any knowledge of the executed woman. One man produced a gun and told myself and photographer Phil Spencer we had no business there.

Then a young fellow, perhaps 20 and dressed in a red blazer, drew up on his bike. “I know what you are looking for,” he said. “Everyone knows about Zarmina. They don’t want trouble. They don’t want reminding. But they are ashamed of what happened to that woman and her girls.”

People know when a wrong has been done. But there was palpable fear that Afghanistan’s turmoil would once again overwhelm them. That the Taliban were all around. That they would return and exact vengeance upon anyone who might now question their actions.

The cyclist ignored those fears. He led us through the cemetery. A stark moonscape of a place. So little colour. So much misery. So many newly dead. Just scores of the thousands who died young in an incessant war. My guide pointed out a mound with two stones facing each other flat on. The positioning meant it was a woman’s grave.

But there was nothing else to determine whose it was. Just the anger of the gunman and other armed men nearby, the embarrassed faces of the gravediggers and the cyclist pointing and saying “This is Zarmina”.

He refused my offer of money, saying “It is time Zarmina’s story was told.” And of course there are so many of these stories to be told. “There were so many nightmares here,” Rana said as we drove to The Herat, Kabul’s best restaurant. The place is little better than a greasy spoon. But Rana would not enter.

“It’s OK. You go, you sit. Just ask them to bring me some food in the car.” That is how it still is in Afghanistan. The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies may be put to rout but still women’s rights are hardly a footnote on the agenda. WE speak to a beggar woman by the restaurant door. She has three children all under five. Her husband is dead. She tells me life should be better now. She receives about 50p a day.

She says all this through her burka. A Pushtun barges through the crowd, bends over her and strikes her head. “Get lost, you whore-bitch!” he shouts. And the woman scrambles away with her children. I ask Bashir, our “fixer”, why he did that. Was he related to the woman? “No. He’s just a Taliban type. Any woman is ripe for a beating. They don’t need an excuse.”

We ate with Rana in the car. She said: “I remember another stadium execution where the man had 10 bullets in his body. His victim’s family took turns to shoot him. “I remember a woman the Taliban accused of having a walkie-talkie. There were 16 of them beating her with cable wires until she pissed blood. All the time they made sure her head and face were covered so they should not be tempted by her looks.

“I tell you I thank God for September 11. Not for the innocent deaths. But, without that day, we’d still be treated like animals. “The whole place was run by Pakistanis and Arabs. No one dared say anything against them.

“It was the same the day Zarmina died. Everyone knew she did not deserve to die. But nobody said anything. Nobody dared.” Now some do dare to speak. Rana and Zarmina’s neighbours tell me the twins, now six, and their brother Hawad,16, have been cast adrift.

Unwanted by their fleeing uncle. Unacknowledged by their grandmother. They beg, they rag-pick at the local dumps. But nothing has been seen of Najeba and Shaista. Five children all lost because of a mother’s desperation to give them a better life. “Yes,” Rana repeated, “Zarmina’s story must be told.” So, with that photograph arriving on my desk last week, it has been told. It cannot be the whole truth but from what we have found and checked, it is nothing but the truth.

The story of a woman beneath veils of violence, madness and terrible sadness. A woman so many saw die. But never knew how she had lived.

Now to wait for the hypocrites to queue up to say this is western propaganda, it is not.

This is Taliban.
This is the Taliban, that Pervez Musharraf vowed to save.
This is Islam unfettered and unchecked,
like it had been for centuries, where no one enforces an individuals’ human rights.
This is the Shariya Law that a proud fundamentalist here said
would be beneficial for humanity, for the whole world.

islamic caliphateshariya lawtalibans

my previous article was based on facts
none of my points are fiction
the events of Mumbai is no tolkein fantasy
the chain of events has no definition other than terrorism

the one terrorist caught alive and has confirmed his nationality,
he has given details of his training, the orders he was given and the way he executed it

The hard facts are,
173 people were killed and 308 injured by 10 Pakistani muslims

these are no extras in a film set, they are very real,
killers doped with cocaine and sent to kill innocent indians, british and jews.

regardless of the rights and wrongs it is cannot be disputed that no other religion is in anyway linked to THIS meaningless act of violence but Islam.

I am yet to come across a “moderate muslim” who has accepted these facts of this attack.
not one will hold up their hand and have the honesty to accept the truth.
or admit that it was committed in the name of Islam.

it has been finger pointings elswheres
excuses, after excuses and theories and anecdotes.
this is the primary reason why there will never be an end to terrorist killings by muslims.

This is a response to the comment left on my last post.

A comment by Naj,

While i am fully aware of how fanatics may interpret Quran to promote violence, I disagree with you that Islam IS the root cause of violence. Jihad is the political umbrella which is abused by the war mongers … war mongers, irrespective of religion, capitalize on IDIOCY of those whom they can brainwash …

A few years ago, Indians of one cult brought down an Air India flight carrying Indians of another cult … a few years ago, I saw a documentary by Anand Patwardhan, I don’t remember the film but it was footage from an Indian Nationalist rally, where the speaker was preaching Indian Supremacy, and how they couldn’t wait to take revenge in the “white” men who had subjugated them for so long … he was praising the nuclear achievements and technological advancements of India, professing “revenge” …

Such idiocracy is NOT particular to Muslims … it is universal and it is motivated by shadowy figures who stand to gain in a very material and tangible way from the intangible faith of the idiots …

My article is based on the global concept that Islamic terrorism is a reality.

I first clarify that
1.I did not say Islam is the root cause of all violence, I have said that if it is Islamic terrorism then the root cause of it can only be Islam, NOT poverty.
2. the idiots I refer to in my article are the GW Bushes and G Browns of this world who have created a frankenstein next door to us.

I do not judge the rights and wrongs of any religious extremism, what disgusts me is the lack of honesty to take responsibility. When the Khalistanis brought down the Air India flight, they did not give any fairytale excuses, they honestly admitted their separatist ideology to create Khalistan. If an Indian nationalist is preaching Indian Supremacy – at least he is honest in admitting his supremacist beliefs.

When a muslim or a muslim organisation carries out killings and themselves admits it to be in the name of Islam, I do not see how the rest of the muslim world say it wasn’t? It is this denial from the so called “moderate muslims” that perpetuates these terrorist beliefs and activities.

sorry Naj, i disagree,
the easily identifiable “fanatics” are never the problem,
the real problem is the dishonesty, hypocrisy and gutless cowardice of the “moderates” who persistently deny the existence of verses in Quran that does direct the killing of non-believers.

I do not agree that any muslim can be brainwashed to believe something that is not written in the pages of the Quran. It is a fact that there is the directive for jihad, to kill non-believers in the Quran; I do not see why muslims the world over does not admit it.

and to claim that poverty is the cause of Islamic terrorism, is an absolute myth.

Mr Osama bin Laden

Let us discuss one person whose name has become synonymous with Islamic terrorist movements. Mr Osama bin Laden.

I challenge anyone to convince me that

1. it was poverty that led Mr bin Laden to form a terrorist organisation. on the contrary it is his own $$$ billions he has used to create terror.

2. Mr bin Laden is of subnormal intelligence or literacy to have been brainwashed.
What ever he has achieved, he has achieved because of his firm convictions of the teachings of the Quran.

3. Mr Bin Laden has any need for war mongering.
He has been honest about his ideology, building an islamic caliphate, the ultimate aim of al Qaeda. and his proposed form of struggle for this ultimate aim the global jihad.

I have no problems with anyone initiating his global jihad as long it is honestly admitted that it is in the cause of Islam for the objectives of the movement is clear and others who do not believe in it can take appropriate steps to protect their own rights.

I have written many times, I would trust the words of the extremists, of the Talibans – for they are not scared to say what their aims are and which passages of Quran they follow in their holy fight. I do not trust the “moderate” muslims who will only find excuses.

So please discuss in specific reference to events of 26/11,
Mumbai was not just words – it has led to 173 deaths of civilians.

Can you explain why Pakistan, even after being shown clear proof of terror arising within her boundaries, is so hostile towards accepting the evidence?
If this attack was indeed war mongering by selfish individuals / organisation – why do they not accept the evidence and prove it was the motive of “shadowy figures” for material gain?

The extreme reluctance to accept the evidence and act on it, it signifies only one possibility,
the Pakistani military or its intelligence is/was involved as alleged –
that is state sponsered terrorism on an international scale.

to fight Mr Bin Laden’s mujahideen is not the problem,
the problem was to have the backstabbing pakistani military of Musharraf as an ally in the war.

if “moderate muslims” accepts that islamic terrorism exist,
then please do not cloud the issues with excuses and misleading rhetorics.

if “moderate muslims” believes in and says they too are in the global “war against terror”
then please do not mislead as to who the real enemies are or what their ideals are.

if “moderate muslims” across the globe expects the world to condemn
the invasion of muslim sovereign soil by US or any other nation, then at least be prepared to acknowledge the atrocity of muslims on another sovereign state, you cannot have it both ways.

if “moderate muslims”
deny the very existence of verses of Islamic Laws of Jihad in the Quran,
deny the very existence of Islam based terrorism, then that is a very different discussion,
please do not waste my time debating it here.

a Pakistani has been caught alive
like a rat he has been squealing his guts out,
giving his life’s details – confirmed by his father and corraborated by his villagers

yet pakistan refuses to believe, even after the truth has been made evident to them

Pak rejects proofs of 26/11 attacks shared by Britain, US

Published on Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 22:01
Islamabad: Pakistan has dismissed evidence on the Mumbai attacks shared by the US and Britain.

The evidence included information given by India and corroborated through other sources. It included Ajmal Kasab’s confession, transcripts of mobile telephone intercepts, and also the logs of recorded conversations.

The US and Britian have given to Pakistan “clinching evidence” of involvement ofelements within the country in the Mumbai terror attacks but has been dismayed over Pakistan’s pussyfooting and not doing enough. Intercepts of satellite and mobile conversations between the attackers in Mumbai and the Pakistan-based elements guiding them, were handed over to Islamabad by the two countries.

However, Islamabad says this will not stand up in court.

this is beyond what will stand up in court and what will not,
this is a clear proof of international terrorism originating from Pakistan

what do the leaders of the rich west do to show they are “fighting the causes of terror”?

Britain promises more anti-terror aid to Pakistan

Associated Press: Published on Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:23
Brown said Britain promised Pakistan counter-terrorism equipment for detecting bombs and explosives at airports. Britain also pledged $9 million to lure youths away from extremist activities by offering them educational materials and programs.

when will these oafs learn
that giving Pakistan more dollars will create more terror

one 7/7 in London
one 9/11 in New York were lesson not hard enough
every cent poured in will be used to create more terror on the non-muslim world
every cent poured into that cess-pit will come back as AK-47s, and bombs and death

GW Bush sunk $10 billion into Musharraf’s pakistan
now G Brown promises to put £9 million more into Zardari’s
there are millions of human individuals starving “peacefully” – who would benefit from it

the root cause of Islamic terror? it is NOT poverty idiots,
it is not poverty that “lures” these youths to become international criminals
for there are muslim youths of western origin who travel to pakistan to learn how to kill

the root cause of Islamic terror? it is the cause of Islam
it is the writings in Quran that is being preached in pakistan
it is the nations and its military’s obsession to possess Kashmir
it is the covert orders of their military presidents through the evil ISI that
encourages their mullahs and madrassas to preach spreading islam through terror

this frankenstein was created by Britain
and has been nurtured for their own nefarius needs by the CIA and US
the innocents of Mumbai and elsewhere on earth that are now suffering for it

the world cannot fight terror if at every opportunity countries like US and GB helps feed it

Pakistan is blackmailing the world with their N-weapons
nukes they could manufacture only by stealing, blackmarketing and illegal n-proliferation

confiscate their nukes,
stop pouring in the millions and billions -
let the “moderate” muslims really starve – only then they will stand up against their evil military

those who wants to live and kill for a stoneage religion
should also live in the stoneage

Quran directs jihad
against the rejecters of truth after it has become evident to them
Pakistan fits the description perfectly, it is time the long suffering world called for a
jihad against Pakistan

Pakistanislamterrorismjihad

would you live in an Islamic Caliphate,
the global state that will be ruled under the Sharia Law?
the one Islamic Caliphate, that every muslims desires, yes, everyone of them,
for it is dictated by their religion.

Islamic Caliphate

a Caliphate, is the only form of governance that has full approval of traditional Islamic theology. the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The Caliph, head of state’s position is based on the notion of a successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s political authority.

The stark example on BBC today.

Taleban ‘will kill school girls’

BBC World South Asia || Friday, 26 December 2008
Taleban militants in the Swat valley in north-west Pakistan have threatened to kill girls who attend school.

A local Taleban commander ordered parents to stop sending their daughters to school by 15 January. In comments broadcast on an illegal radio station, he threatened to blow up schools which enrolled female students.

This year alone, Taleban militants have destroyed more than 130 schools in the Swat valley. They want to bring in Islamic sharia law in the region. Militant attacks on schools in the region have deprived more than 17,000 students of education.

These schools are not Islamic religious institutions and the students are taught courses based on the government syllabus.

To kill in the name of religion?
then are Talibans not muslims?

Talibans

the name confirms them as Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement
an Islamic fundamentalist politico-religious movement initiated and perpetuated by the madrassa students in the Helmand and Kandahar region of Afghanistan.

Madrassas

what is the ‘madrassa’ -
is it not an Arabic word for any type of school, college or university?

is it not that students in madrassas memorises the entire Quran?
then is it not, every action of the students of madrassa have the endorsement in the words of Quran?

and is it not –
that the restrictions imposed on every individuals fundamental human rights
the killings of school girls in Afghanistan who wish to learn
in schools like every other child of this world
- are also being endorsed in the fundamentals of the Quran.

This comment by a Sajjad of IP 116.72.188.176
the self proclaimed muslim fundamentalist on my site.

3. I am proud to be a Muslim fundamentalist
I am a fundamentalist Muslim who, by the grace of Allah, knows, follows and strives to practise the fundamentals of Islam. A true Muslim does not shy away from being a fundamentalist. I am proud to be a fundamentalist Muslim because, I know that the fundamentals of Islam are beneficial to humanity and the whole world.

There is not a single fundamental of Islam that causes harm or is against the interests of the human race as a whole.

oh yeah?
tell that to the parents of every school girl who gets killed, Mr Sajjad.

islam caliphate

no, I do not rest my case.
this is the first of a series documenting events
from around the world TODAY of life and human rights as is under the Islamic Shariya Law.

for those who lives in the romanticism of Arabian Nights
unaware of the realities of living under the Shariya, real possibility of having to live under Shariya,
for those who do not bother to find out what individual rights they would have in such a world…

Paleocontact – the ancient astronaut theories have never been proved.
Or received support within the scientific community.
Neither can it be disproved.

What if
we are the descendents of
or if we have been visited by ancient astronauts –
life forms, or a race, or a civilisation of galactic proportions
from somewhere, it can be almost anywhere, in this infinite universe
or a parallel; or from a dimension imperceptable to our primitive three-D senses?

They left behind for us to follow,
their ways of life
their rules
in the form of a belief system focusing on a system of laws,
the doctrine of an unseen being considered supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth.
A God! And a religion.

And they created fear in us – so we followed without questioning.

Fear, The Foundation Of Religion

Bertrand Russell | March 6, 1927 | Lecture delivered at the Battersea Town Hall.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.

Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things.

What if
we were visited by not one but many of such alien races,
each from a different corner of the universe, each with
different body forms,
different requirements
different mind forms
different principles
different thoughts
different beliefs
different laws
and each of them directed us to follow ONLY their tenets.
Different Gods! As many religions!

What if
these alien life forms
because of their unique xenobiology
had to remain segragated and were/are intolerant of each other
what if in their bigotry they were as bad as one other, if not worse.

What if
they were the Gods or the descendents of
and those they could not tolerate or fought and killed were the evil – the Devil.

What if
ONLY their own home world or solar system or their galaxy was to be our Heaven
and every galaxy outside their domain was
Hell!

What if
what we have done for centuries
is simply perpetuate the bigotry and conflict of galactic proportions.
and without questioning have followed “On earth, as it is in heaven(s)” –
each religion dreaming of a different heaven – of a different galactic empire.

Bertrand Russell
In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

We are now capable of creating monstrous tunnels to recreate a nanoscopic ‘big bang’ – at a staggering cost of €3.2–6.4 billion that would have fed the hungries of this world till kingdom come.

Yet we do not have the courage to apply our knowledge to question or explain the no longer “supernatural” events of centuries ago. Or to shelve our ancient beliefs and practices and form a new religion, that is relevent to what we are now, and where we wish to go in our future.

A code of conduct to live by, a terrestrial religion.
A religion of Earth, created by earthpeople and for all earth’s inhabitants.

religionancient astronaut

what ifs?

are the results of an idle mind drifting laterally
from and along the thoughts and beliefs of the norm, cannot be proved, cannot be disproved either – littleindian

… what kind of a religion, in the twenty-first century
can dictate this:

Top Afghan policewoman shot dead

BBC News | Sunday, 28 September 2008 12:04 UK

Malalai Kakar was not allowed to work as a police officer under the Taleban

Gunmen in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar have killed the country’s most prominent policewoman, officials say.

Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women, was shot in her car as she was about to leave for work.
Taleban rebels, who banned women from joining the police when they were in power, said they had carried out the shooting.

“We killed Malalai Kakar,” a Taleban spokesman told AFP news agency.
“She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target.”

Every individual, regardless of religion, has to ask themselves if there is a place
for 7th century rules in this 21st century world we live in –
we have no other option but to share.

Can the excuse of “religious tolerance” overrides an individual’s basic human rights?
Should we, the humans of this entire world, take the blame for this individual’s murder?

IslamTalibanhuman rightslittleindian

Yet again the rabid animals have killed innocent civilians.
Yesterday 5 bomb blasts in a Delhi market place have left 20 dead and 90 injured.

20 DEAD IN DELHI SERIAL BLASTS

CNN-IBN
New Delhi: Five bomb blasts rocked popular shopping destinations in the national capital within a span of 22 minutes on Saturday evening killing at least 20 people and leaving over 100 injured.

The first blast took place at Ghaffar Market in the Karol Bagh area at about 1815 hrs IST in which 16 people were killed and over 20 injured.
Soon after the blast in Ghaffar market, two explosions took place in Connaught Place killing four people.
The two blasts in Connaught place took place at the Central Park near Palika Bazaar and at Barakhamba Road.
There were two blasts in Greater Kailash-I, too, with the first one taking place near Levi’s store and the other blast took place near the Prince Pan Corner damaging 10 shops.
The blasts were of low intensity and ball bearings were used to maximise the impact.

The Indian Mujahideen emailed IBN-CNN minutes before the blasts claiming responsibilities.

Indian Mujahideen claims responsibility

NDTV Correspondence

An e-mail purportedly from a group calling itself the “Indian Mujahideen” claimed it carried out the attacks, adding: “Do whatever you can. Stop us if you can.”

Killed by muslims.
Killed by mujahideen
Killing in the name of Allah.
Killing in the name of Islam.

Yet, there are muslims who will shrug of responsibility under their traditional excuse.
Such as,

All India United Muslim Mocha (AIUMM), in a communique, termed the blasts as an attack on sovereignty, integrity and secularism. “Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Persons involved in such heinous acts cannot claim to be a Muslim,” Kamal Ashraf, spokesperson of the AIUMM, said.

On a discussion forum,
when asked to condemn these killing in the name of Islam, a muslim member wrote

those who are killing for repligion are not the followers of the real religion. those who work for peace like myself are the followers of the real religion.

I can only read in disbelief.
With one evasive word and an evasive excuse – the responsibility is wiped off.

Any act that has been committed in the name of a religion the entire religion has to stand up and take responsibility. When there are a series of such acts with the same message it is all the more reason that the religion takes the responsibility to stop it.

Those who killed they were all muslims.
There are no ‘non-real’ muslims, just like there is no ‘non-real’ Islam.

There is only one Quran.
There is only one text from their God – one teaching.
Those who kill also finds justification in the same text.
There is no two ISLAMs.

The question in my mind is,
if and when the perpetrators are arrested, tried and found guilty of mass murder,
should they be hung?
or should they be shot?
or should they be pardoned because their act was in the name of religion?

Should we not ask the victims and their families?

TerrorismIslammujahideenDelhihuman rightslittleindian

anyone,
any group,
any religion,
any ideology,
any nationality
who is/are capable of this

Image: From: Sify News
Scene of a blast site outside the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabd on Saturday.

Unborn, yet blown up – Doctor, pregnant wife die in blast

From: Telegraph India

Ahmedabad, July 27: As an orthopaedic surgeon at Civil Hospital, Prerak Shah, 32, would have been preparing for a busy night tending to one blast injured after another as they were wheeled in.

Instead, he was blown up with his wife and unborn child as last evening’s terrorists made the hospital their 16th and last target, hitting the injured a second time and turning a healer into a victim.

The bomb went off in a car in the parking lot as the young doctor and his wife, who had just arrived for a gynaecological check-up, walked past the trauma centre yards from the site.

Many indoor patients left the hospital today. Amid the atmosphere of fear came news that a car bomb had been defused near the trauma ward of Surat’s Puna Hospital. It was a Maruti 800, with a Vadodara registration.

I can no longer believe they too deserve any human rights
the world would be a better place for other humans
the sooner they are exterminated.

Its beyond human tolerance.

]]> http://littleindian.awmyth.net/2008/07/28/rabid-animals/feed/ 5 http://littleindian.awmyth.net/2007/12/25/the-shame-is-only-on-us/ http://littleindian.awmyth.net/2007/12/25/the-shame-is-only-on-us/#comments Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:09:28 +0000 littleindian http://littleindian.awmyth.net/2007/12/25/the-shame-is-only-on-us/ [digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/the_shame_is_only_on_us]

First they banned her book
but the ban was overturned in a Court of Law.

Then they forced her out of the state,
at the rioting of Islamic extremists and marxist sympathisers.
And refused to let her return, or give her the refuge she had requested.

And all so conveniently timed to divert attention from the Nandigram massacres.

Now,
following the victory for ideology
the defeat of pseudo-secular hypocrisy
Gujarat, has abraded the apathetic eyes of the nation.

We have woken up, at last.
Hopefully some of us.

Questions will be asked, policies examined, manifestos scrutinised.
Where is our freedom of thoughts and expression?
Who robbed us of our basic human rights?

The Marxist politburo is unable to go back on their arrogant stance.
Like cowards they stayed hidden, instead
their 93 years old ex leader made the humiliating turnaround.
“If she wants to return to Kolkata or elsewhere in West Bengal, she is welcome.
But the Centre will have to ensure her security,” Mr Basu told reporters.

It is us Bengalees, who have failed
if not Ms Nasrin,
but surely the rights of every human being, to free thoughts, speech and expression.

Most of all we failed to give safe refuge to one
who today is homeless for her courage to speak out against injustice and prejudice.
The shame is on us.

For freedom of expression

by Taslima Nasreen: November 12, 1999

Taslima Nasreen took the floor during Commission V of UNESCO’s General Conference,
as a delegate of the NGO “International Humanist and Ethical Union” (I.H.E.U.).

This is the full text of Ms Nasreen’s declaration, from Webworld:

“I was threatened by the religious fundamentalists in my country Bangladesh. They have decreed a fatwa against me and set a price on my head. Not only that, I am a criminal according to the government of my country too. The government there has banned my book, and issued an arrest warrant against me for committing blasphemy. I was forced to leave my country. Since 6 years I have been living in exile.

I was born in a Muslim family, but I became an atheist. In course of my training in science, I developed the powers of observation, experiment, analysis, and reasoning. Without reasoning, I found, nothing should be accepted as fact. I have been fighting against injustice, unreason, and prejudice. I exposed the crimes of religion, particularly the injustice and oppression against women.

It makes me surprised that some Western states have declared the protection of human rights to be one of their supreme objectives, but then they patronized fundamentalism both overtly and covertly. Democratic governments recognize military dictatorships for short-run political interests. Secular states make friends with autocracies as well as theocracies. They even tolerate the completely inhuman behavior of their own fundamentalists. Such double standards practiced by so-called democratic and secular states at home and abroad give the fundamentalists a sort of legitimacy. Governments then have to succumb to the fundamentalists’ pressure and proscribe books and make arrangements to send its writers and authors to prison.

Some Westerners argue that not all the customs in the third world countries are harmful for women. They find a sort of stability and social peace in the oriental world. It is nonsense. For me, there can be no difference in the concept of human rights between the East and the West. If the veil is bad for Western women, then it is bad for their oriental sisters as well. If patriarchy is to be fought against in the West, it should be equally fought against in the East. The fight, in fact, is more urgent there because most of the women have neither any education nor any economic independence. If modern secular education is good for Western women, why should the Eastern women be deprived of it!

The fundamentalists cannot be countered without a relentless and uncompromising fight. The struggle should be both theoretical and tactical. Democracy and secularism should be applied in practice and not remain a mere play of words.

Fundamentalism is an ideology that diverts people from the path of natural development of consciousness and undermines their personal rights. Fundamentalists do not believe in individualism, liberty of personal choice, or plurality of thought. Moreover, as they are believers in a particular faith, they believe only in propagating their own ideas as autocrats generally do . They do not encourage or entertain free debate, they deny others the right to express their own views freely, and they cannot tolerate anything which they perceive as going against their faith.

I believe in fundamental rights of human beings to express themselves orally or in their writings; in equal rights for women in every sphere of life; and in constructing a society in which everybody gets a fair deal. We all should work for it. Media is helpful for spreading the ideas of human rights. And for media to work, the state has to be secular, the religious laws has to be abolished to create uniform civil code in which women get equalities. Education, of course secular education is important for women to get the knowledge about their rights. Religious education and politics based on religion must be banned to save the mankind. As they are not banned in my country, and the country is not secular, I, as a writer and journalist, once worked in media, was prevented to express my ideas and thoughts. It is impossible to have coexistence of religion and freedom of expression.”

It is never too late to make amends.
We need to stop fighting amongst ourselves
and for once, just once, stand up to say, enough is enough.

We are entitled to our rights, we are entitled to know the truth.

Bengalmarxismislamnegationismpseudo secularismhuman rights

Photo: Wikipedia

As I write today, in Bengal, it is Mahalaya.
The counting down to a major festival, the Durga Pujo, has started.

Pinning the new moon for reference,
it marks the beginning of a new lunar phase,
the seventh to the tenth day being the four days of the Pujo.

Early in the morning, All India Radio will broadcast a reading from a sacred text,
just as it has done for the last 80 years or so, the same recording,
the same lines, the same songs and the very same voice
of Birendra Krishna Bhadra.

Ever since I can remember, it would seem a magical time,
we would be up almost the whole night not wanting to miss a second of it.
We didn’t have a radio, relied on our neighbour to turn up the volume of his.
Later, when we proudly had one we too turned our sets up for others to listen.

Never a year, when the recitation failed to reverberate the exciting anticipation
of the coming pujodays, of new clothes, visiting relatives, and total freedom.

The programme was timed to end with the first lights of dawn.
Being autumn, the air would be cool, the grey sky freshly washed with layers of pink.

The clay modellers have worked feverishly in their workshops to create images
of Goddess Durga, out of smooth alluvial clay of the Ganges; and
on this Mahalaya day, they will paint the idols’ eyes.

The image of the goddess traditionally shows her in battle,
a weapon in each of her 10 arms.
10!!? yes.
She is also called Dashobhuja, the One with 10 arms.

When very young, somehow I never questioned it.
She was a goddess, everything was accepted without questioning.

And every passing year, the whole ritual repeated,
the annual visit of Ma Durga with 10 arms became part of our lives.

But with time, I realised ten arms was bio-mechanically impossible,
Ma Durga and her ten arms got pushed into the realms of mythology.
Only of late I have started to believe that most of our God and Goddesses
were infact aliens from far off galaxies with unimaginably advanced technology.

It set me thinking, some of these god(dess)s have 4 arms, whiles Durga has 10.
What if the narrators of ancients, in their writing of events long ago
used multiple arms as a way of comparing their strengths?
And Goddess Durga, who came to earth to fight a battle
was the most powerful of them all, the perfect 10?

Photograph: Baptist Mission Press Calcutta.

After all, I do not see the 149 horses pulling my car,
even though the manual states it has a pull of that many horse power!
What if the authors had simply tried to tell us that she had ten kinds of weapons?
With every writing the texts got changed bit by bit, to a very different interpretation.

It is possible.

I have drifted away from home religion and gods, but I miss that atmosphere
and I miss the sweet hot tea, with freshly fried singaras and warm jilipis.

Oh! to be in Kolkata, once again for a Mahalaya morning,

My memoriesKolkataIndiaDurga pujoAlien astronautsMahalaya

State of Azad Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir usually shortened to Azad Kashmir (literally ‘free Kashmir’), is part of the Pakistani-administered section of the Kashmir region, along with the Northern Areas; its official name is Azad Jammu and Kashmir. It covers an area of 13,297 km² (5,134 mi²), with its capital at Muzaffarabad, and has an estimated population of almost 4 million.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch
is an independent, nongovernmental organization, supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly. As far as impartiality goes, nothing comes more fair than this group.

This is a report from HRW, dated September 2006.

‘Free Kashmir’ Far From Free

Government Opponents Face Torture, Censorship and Political Repression

(Islamabad, September 21, 2006) –
In Azad Kashmir, a region largely closed to international scrutiny until a devastating earthquake hit last year, the Pakistani government represses democratic freedoms, muzzles the press and practices routine torture, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Based on research in Azad Kashmir (which means “free Kashmir”) and Pakistan, the 71-page report,

“‘With Friends Like These …’: Human Rights Violations in Azad Kashmir,” uncovers abuses by the Pakistani military, intelligence services and militant organizations.

“Although ‘azad’ means ‘free,’ the residents of Azad Kashmir are anything but,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Pakistani authorities govern Azad Kashmir with strict controls on basic freedoms.”

Before a massive earthquake struck in October, Azad Kashmir was one of the most closed territories in the world.

Tight controls on freedom of expression have been a hallmark of government policy in Azad Kashmir. Pakistan has prevented the creation of independent media in the territory through bureaucratic restrictions and coercion. Publications and literature favoring independence is banned. While militant organizations promoting the incorporation of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir state into Pakistan have had free rein to propagate their views, groups promoting an independent Kashmir find their speech sharply, sometimes violently curtailed.

Under Azad Kashmir’s constitution, which Pakistan imposed in 1974, election candidates are prescreened to ensure that only those who support Kashmir’s union with Pakistan can contest elections. Anyone who wants to take part in public life in Azad Kashmir has to sign a pledge of loyalty to Pakistan, while anyone who publicly supports or peacefully works for an independent Kashmir faces persecution.

“There is a façade of an elected local government, but the federal government in Islamabad, the army and the intelligence agencies control all aspects of political life in Azad Kashmir,” said Adams. “The military shows no tolerance for dissent and practically runs the region as a fiefdom.”

Torture is routinely used in Pakistan, and this practice is also routine in Azad Kashmir. Human Rights Watch has documented incidents of torture by the intelligence services and others acting at the army’s behest but knows of no cases in which members of military and paramilitary security and intelligence agencies have been prosecuted or even disciplined for acts of torture or mistreatment.

Despite the Pakistani government’s criticism of human rights violations in neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir state in India, refugees from Jammu and Kashmir are discriminated against and mistreated by the authorities. Kashmiri refugees and former militants from India, most of whom are secular nationalists and culturally and linguistically distinct from the peoples of Azad Kashmir, are particularly harassed through constant surveillance, curbs on political expression, arbitrary arrest and beatings.

“The Pakistani government often pretends that the only problems faced by Kashmiris are in India,” said Adams. “It should start looking into ways of ending human rights abuses in Azad Kashmir.”

Human Rights Watch urged international donors, which have poured billions of dollars of urgently needed relief and reconstruction aid into Azad Kashmir since the earthquake, to insist on structural changes in governance and the promotion of both human rights and the rule of law. Recent corruption allegations against senior government officials highlight serious weaknesses in the rule of law and governmental accountability.

“As it supports reconstruction efforts, the international community must insist that Pakistan respect the human rights of the people of Azad Kashmir,” said Adams. “The Pakistani government must ensure that the people of Azad Kashmir can exercise their fundamental civil and political rights in an environment free of coercion and fear.”

Kashmir News Network.

Kasmiri Pandits-the original inhabitants of the Valley of Kashmir, are Kashmiris too. Their voice is NO less important than voices of any other ethnic or religious groups. This is one such voice Kashmir: Distortions and Reality and should be equally heard.

The Punjabi speaking districts of Mirpur, parts of Poonch and Muzaffarabad form the fifth distinct region. This corridor type belt is culturally, linguistically and socially part of Punjab. It is this small area which is called Azad Kashmir.

As apolitical and diplomatic strategy and to have a distinct base for harassing India, Pakistan has provided a symbolic administrative set-up here. There is a President, the Prime Minister, Assembly and other propaganda stuff but actual strings are pulled by the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs of the Pakistan government.

To call this area Azad Kashmir is scandalous. Its correct description would be Pakistan occupied Punjabi speaking areas of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state. A large number of people from this area especially from Mirpur have settled in U.K., U.S.A. and other foreign countries. These people mislead the world by calling themselves Kashmiris and with huge oil funds (from Saudi Arabia) at their disposal, disinform the West by claiming to be fighting for self-determination of Kashmir. In this regard they talk of North and South Korea, North and South Yemen and even mention the Berlin wall. Some Westerners do take this patently wrong assertion on its face value.

This Human Rights Watch report (quoted above) confirms what is written here.

historyKashmirIndiainsurgencyhuman rightspropaganda

Having lived most of my life in a society fragmented by hindu caste system.
I have tried to understand what it really means, to strip it down to its skeleton to try and understand the real structure.

Why did we develop the system in the first place?
The caste system was initially formulated based on one’s profession and not religion.

Documented in Manu-smriti the “memorised text” it is believed to have been finally written during the Vedic period. Ascribed to Manu, who is, according to the Hindu mythology, the forefather of all humans, it becomes tagged to our mythology.

It has never been regarded by Hindus as “the supreme law-book”; till colonial rulers, like Robert Clive and Lord Macaulay, found it a useful tool to ridicule the Hindu religion.

The caste system was initially meant as a guidance with regard to behaviour and spiritual practice, to be undertaken in accordance with one’s qualifications and profession.
Brahmins – the priests; Kshatriyas – the warriors;
Vaishyas -traders; Shudras – service providers.

It was never meant to be a hierarchial system nor a hereditary caste system, as this verse from the same text says:

“As the son of Shudra can attain the rank of a Brahmin, the son of Brahmin can attain rank of a shudra. Even so with him who is born of a Vaishya or a Kshatriya” (X: 65)

Parjanya (other people) – was a group outside the the main society.
They lived separately within a subculture of their own, usually outside the inhabited limits of villages and townships. They were the people who worked in what was seen as ‘unhealthy, and / or polluting jobs i.e. tannery, disposing dead bodies, humans and animals.

One has to understand this was a long, long time before the advent of medical sciences. And to appreciate that as early as in the 2nd Millennium BC, they had recognised the communicable form of diseases, when there was no known scientific therapeutics, and the best chance of survival was avoidance.

This group were made ‘untouchable’ in the sense of being ‘quarantined’, as because of their profession they dealt with infected remains of bodies, and not because they were born inferior. The parjanyas themselves may have had developed immunity to the diseases.

This practice is no different to isolation of patients with communicable fatal diseases, who also are deemed “untouchables” but only for the reasons of safety of vulnerable individuals.

With time methods of “isolation” evolved and were enforced such like maintaining a certain distance or using separate water sources; the modern day equivalent of ‘no touch’ isolations, the practice of “barrier” nursing.

They had an obvious place in society, they served a role no other was capable of, a service no one else could deliver. They were segregated for what they did, but were never harmed or killed enmasse. (The names dalits and harijans and the accompanying politics of the “untouchables” were coined only in the last century.)

I firmly believe initially our caste system was a brilliant concept, a system based on knowledge far ahead of its time. It was introduction of a code of ‘appropriate’ conduct, and the way to live within a structure of certain rules of the society. It also devised a system of reducing incidence of communicable diseases.

The most effectively way to enforce it was through religion. In the process it got closely intertwined with it. Rituals and customs were devised and enforced which got woven into the very fabric of the society. With time it became more complex than originally intended. It is a system that has been so deeply imprinted in our psyche, that most of us hindus would not even think of questioning the system, let alone getting rid of it.

It is a system that has served its purpose for a few thousand years and now has definitely outlived its uses. To continue with it can only hold us back from being truly democratic.

The world as our fore-fathers who devised the system knew, has changed, it is for all Indians to change with time and leave this system back in history.

If today we resent any legislation the provides reservation for backward classes, we first have to learn to treat every one as equal, with equal dignity.
If we resent forced conversion of our lowcaste hindus into other religion, we should first denounce the system that condemns them to a demeaned status for eternity.
If we are to declare proudly of being a democracy, we have to first believe in our hearts that all men and women are indeed equal.

All men and women are born equal.
When we die, without the touch of an untouchable we will rot in our flesh.
And as ashes and dust, we shall all come together, all become indistinguishable.

Photograph by Terje Oestigaard

What caste am I?
I was born to Bramhin parents.
I am in a serving profession, so I should be classed a Shudra.
I have touched cadavers in the course of my training, that makes me a Parjanya,
an untouchable.

Bramhin by birth, Shudra by profession, or even a Parjanya.
But I am still the same me, same genes, on the same chromosomes.

We blame the British for cutting us into pieces at the time of our independance,
we have only us to blame for cutting ourselves from within.

Indiahistoryhinduismcaste systemlife