Moeed Pirzada | FB Blog |
Hi! thanks to all Hindu members of this Forum who have take time and effort to write detailed paras to let us understand how they see their faith and its evolution in modern times. I cannot thank everyone separately but let me add that I read comments of Rit Chandra, Santosh Tripathi, Karan Ch, Praveen Kumar, Ashutosh Anand, Sameer Virmani, Vicky Sindhu and Amit Jacques Soofi with interest..I am still reading others! It’s clear that Hindus don’t see any boundaries of their faith and I guess there won’t be a concept of ex-communication which also becomes apparent from the diverse nature of responses, because many responses – though so well written – are so different from each other that in another religious community will lead to a blood bath but apparently there is a quiet acceptability of differences from each other in terms of approaching the ‘dharma’..and that may be the strength that helps in interacting with a fast changing world and fast integrating global village; something which should be very educative for other members of this page.
I have been reading off and on about Hinduism; but we seldom get to interact with Hindus on an extended period and like languages – I tried learning French in Lahore, New York and London and Spanish in New York but forgot soon without practice- you lose sense of things without repeat inter-action; my maximum exposure was during my stay in the beautiful town of Austin, in Texas which was perhaps one of the biggest campus of Indo-Pakistani communities and I guess still is; and I happened to attend colorful festivals like “Ras & Gharba” which were amazing… during that time period I got to read one book, that was neither academic nor historical but instead a travelogue by as of then an unknown American graduate of Yale University – Jonah Blank- who had traveled from one end of India to the other, tracing the mythical journey of Rama when he chased Rawan to rescue Sita…that book, a travelogue was “Arrow of the Blue Skinned God” …Jonah Blank keeps on traveling in modern India of 1990’s but with every new destination he takes us back to the ancient world of Rama and his journey….most other books I have forgotten but this one has stuck, and if you get the opportunity then you must read it…
I must apologize for some of the rude responses from a tiny minority of Pakistani members of this page; fearing this I had requested all that let this post be “Only and Only for Hindus”..and I guess one cannot be more clear than this; but having said this, I am glad that most respondents were not ‘disrespectful’ and many decided to ignore rude comments from each other; so in the end there was a kind of interaction and understanding…To all those who wrote “rude comments” I must say that we the Muslims are the most sensitive about “negative comments” about our faith, from anyone but we often forget the sayings of Prophet who admonished abusing other’s faith “for they will then foul mouth your faith”
For a better future in South Asia, and all around us, it’s important for all of us to understand where we are coming from? we need to appreciate each other’s religions, conventions and historical narratives; only then can we understand what are the sensitivities and why? let me conclude by adding that most of the world, across different religions fail to understand the Muslim sensitivities towards Prophet Muhammad because when they reflect inside their range of experiences they don’t find a parallel; this is because the way other great religions – including Christianity evolved – there did not exist a central defining character in the way it was in Islam and still is; some of us will remember that British colonizers had often referred to Indian Muslims as “Muhammadans”…
Any way let me conclude; by now the controversy raging across Middle East has taken a totally different dimension; three days ago on Friday I went to a dinner where I met a select group of executives – most of whom were either educated in the US or had sustained professional exposures inside the US – and some of them were concerned that this Gas station owner in California who has turned into a film maker on Islam, thanks to $5 million of donations, looks like a suspicious buffoon who has been set up by a “master mind” and the objective is to dent Obama at a time when his national security policies are his strong point. I laughed at the speculations as “conspiracy theories”…especially since the insinuation was towards Israelis trying to influence the US Elections…..however I am posting a detailed piece from New York Times (US is preparing for a Long Seige of Arab Unrest) that explains that how Obama’s re-election campaign is suddenly in trouble because of the images pouring in from Middle East and from around the world…keep in mind that half the right wing America still suspects that Obama is either a Muslim or Muslim sympathizer… that shouldn’t surprise anyone because at least 33% of the members of this Forum at any time keep on suspecting me to be an American Agent, a Qadyani, an ISI stooge, a Christian sympathizer, a Raw Agent, an Atheist, Zaid Hamid type fundo and I guess now in the last 24 hours a secret Hindu…fortunately that 33% keeps on changing with every post…