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Modern progressive URDU poetry

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Modern progressive URDU poetry
*کرو،،،، حُسنِ یار کا تذکرہ*
*تمہیں کیا پڑی ہے کہ رات دن*
*کہو،،،،،، حاکموں کو بُرا بھلا*
*تمہیں،،، فکرِ عمرِ عزیز ہے*
*تو نہ حاکموں کو خفا کرو*
*جو امیرِ شہر کہے تُمہیں*
*وہی شاعری میں کہا کرو*
*کوئی واردات کہ دن کی ہو*
*کوئی سانحہ کسی رات ہو*
*نہ امیرِ شہر کا زکر ہو*
*نہ غنیمِ وقت کی بات ہو*
*کہیں تار تار ہوں،، عصمتیں*
*میرے دوستوں کو نہ دوش دو*
*جو کہیں ہو ڈاکہ زنی اگر*
*تو نہ کوتوال کا،،،،، نام لو*
*کسی تاک میں ہیں لگے ہُوئے*
*میرے جاں نثار،،،،، گلی گلی*
*ہیں میرے اشارے کے مُنتظر*
*میرے عسکری میرے لشکری*
*جو تُمہارے جیسے جوان تھے*
*کبھی،،، میرے آگے رُکے نہیں*
*انہیں اس جہاں سے اُٹھا دِیا*
*وہ جو میرے آگے جُھکے نہیں*
*جنہیں،، مال و جان عزیز تھے*
*وہ تو میرے ڈر سے پِگھل گئے*
*جو تمہاری طرح اُٹھے بھی تو*
*اُنہیں بم کے شعلے نگل گئے*
*میرے جاں نثاروں کو حُکم ہے*
*کہ،،،،،، گلی گلی یہ پیام دیں*
*جو امیرِ شہر کا حُکم ہے*
*بِنا اعتراض،، وہ مان لیں*
*جو میرے مفاد کے حق میں ہیں*
*وہی،،،،،،، عدلیہ میں رہا کریں*
*مجھے جو بھی دل سے قبول ہوں*
*سبھی فیصلے،،،،،،، وہ ہُوا کریں*
*جنہیں مجھ سے کچھ نہیں واسطہ*
*انہیں،،،، اپنے حال پہ چھوڑ دو*
*وہ جو سرکشی کے ہوں مرتکب*
*انہیں،،،،، گردنوں سے مروڑ دو*
*وہ جو بے ضمیر ہیں شہر میں*
*اُنہیں،،،، زر کا سکہ اُچھال دو*
*جنہیں،،،،، اپنے درش عزیز ہوں*
*اُنہیں کال کوٹھڑی میں ڈال دو*
*جو میرا خطیب کہے تمہیں*
*وہی اصل ہے، اسے مان لو*
*جو میرا امام،،،،،،، بیاں کرے*
*وہی دین ہے ، سبھی جان لو*
*جو غریب ہیں میرے شہر میں*
*انہیں بُھوک پیاس کی مار دو*
*کوئی اپنا حق جو طلب کرے*
*تو اسے،، زمین میں اتار دو*
*جو میرے حبیب و رفیق ہیں*
*انہیں، خُوب مال و منال دو*
*جو، میرے خلاف ہیں بولتے*
*انہیں، نوکری سےنکال دو*
*جو ہیں بے خطاء وہی در بدر*
*یہ عجیب طرزِ نصاب ہے*
*جو گُناہ کریں وہی معتبر*
*یہ عجیب روزِ حساب ہے*

“When I’m honored for my journalism, everyone will see one thing: My headscarf” By Sawsan Morrar

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Sawsan Morrar, a multimedia journalist at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, was chosen as a 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association Scholar.

Those who tune in to watch this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday will hear my name called as I take the stage to accept a journalism scholarship. They won’t see my portfolio of work, and they will likely forget my name. But they’re sure to notice and remember one thing about me: my headscarf.

Some may call it symbolic that a Muslim American journalist will be recognized at the annual dinner the same year that President Trump declined to attend. Trump is breaking from a long tradition of presidents meeting with the award recipients.

And as I prepare to attend, I know some at the event may not perceive me as a fellow reporter who, like them, relishes the thought of meeting journalists I admire. Muslims don’t have the luxury of being a fusion of their achievements, interests and uniqueness. Rather, in the eyes of others, we are only Muslim.

I’ve faced this challenge before. After doing some pre-reporting over the phone, I encounter surprise when I meet my subjects in person — Who is she, they wonder? Where is the reporter? Often an interview subject, government official or employer will grow cool once it becomes clear I am a Muslim.

On hearing that I will attend the dinner, a seasoned journalist asked what I think about Trump — not because I am a reporter, but because I am a Muslim who has made the conscious decision to wear my faith. Another journalist asked me whether the frequency of my negative experiences in the field has increased since Trump took office.

Just last month, while traveling to Malaysia on assignment, I was asked to board an empty plane only to be met by three Department of Homeland Security agents on the jet bridge. They took me through an inconspicuous, concrete stairway and asked me repeatedly who was funding my trip and why. Was it so hard to believe that a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf was sent to report on climate change?

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‘When philosophy needed Muslims, Jews and Christians alike’ By Peter Adamson

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If you were asked to name the most important philosopher of 10th-century Baghdad, you would presumably not hesitate to say ‘al-Farabi’. He’s one of the few thinkers of the Islamic world known to non-specialists, deservedly so given his ambitious reworking of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics and political philosophy. But if you were yourself a resident of 10th-century Baghdad, you might more likely think of Yahya ibn ‘Adi. He is hardly a household name now, but was mentioned by the historian al-Mas‘udi as the only significant teacher of Aristotelian philosophy in his day. But ibn ‘Adi is not just a good example of how fame wanes across the centuries. He is also a fine illustration of the inter-religious nature of philosophy in the Islamic world.

Ibn ‘Adi was a Christian, as were most of the members of the group of philosophers who wrote commentaries on Aristotle at this time in Baghdad. The Muslim al-Farabi, who was apparently ibn ‘Adi’s teacher, was an exception to the rule. Completing the ecumenical picture, ibn ‘Adi was involved in an exchange of letters with a Jewish scholar named Ibn Abi Sa‘id al-Mawsili, who wrote to him with questions about Aristotle’s philosophy that he was hoping to have cleared up. Admittedly, Baghdad was an exceptional place, the capital of empire and thus a melting pot that drew scholars from all over the Islamic world. But philosophy was an interfaith phenomenon in other times and places too. The best example is surely Islamic Spain, celebrated for its culture of convivencia (‘living together’). Two of the greatest medieval thinkers, the Muslim Averroes and the Jew Maimonides, were rough contemporaries who both hailed from al-Andalus. After Toledo fell into the hands of the Christians, the Jew Avendauth collaborated with the Christian Gundisalvi to translate a work by the Muslim thinker Avicenna from Arabic into Latin.

That last example is a revealing one. Philosophy in these times often involved representatives of different faiths because it often presupposed translation. Hardly any philosophers of the Islamic world could read Greek, not even Averroes, the greatest commentator on Aristotle. He and other Muslim enthusiasts for Hellenic wisdom had to rely on translations, which had mostly been executed by Christians in the 8th to 10th centuries. Knowledge of Greek had been maintained by Christian scholars in Byzantine Syria, which explains why Muslim patrons turned to Christians to render works by Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen and many other ancient thinkers into Arabic. Thus the very existence of Hellenic-inspired philosophy in the Islamic world was a manifestation of inter-religious cooperation.

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Transcript of Dr. Shoeb Amin’s talk on April 9th, 2017

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Attendees:
Nasik Elahi, Imtiaz Bokhari, Fayyaz Sheikh, Noor Salik, Mushtaq Ahmad, Ajaz Uddin, Ramesh & Kanta Ubriani and Jamila Amin.
Speaker: Shoeb Amin
After a brief presentation describing my recent visit to Najaf & Karbala I started what I hope was first of many Sunni-Shia intra-faith discussions. Factors that may have been in place long before the events of Ghadir e Khum and those following the Prophet’s death, like tribal rivalries (Ali, Abu Bakr, Umar &Uthman were all from different sub tribes of Quraysh tribe ) and jealousies; events happening after Ayesha was accidentally left in the desert returning from an expedition( Ali advised the Prophet to divorce Ayesha on the prophet’s solicitation of Ali’s advice) and Fatema’s eventual marriage to Ali after proposals from Abu Bakr and Umar were turned down.  Then the actual events of Ghadir e Khum and the Saqifah were presented, two of the most important event that were the beginning of the Shia-Sunni split.  The materials I used were derived from Reza Aslan’s “No god but God”, Barnaby Rogerson’s “Heirs of the Prophet”, some other books I have read in the past and the articles from the following links.
1) https://www.al-islam.org/ghadir/incident.htm
The above is the Shia view of the events of Ghadir e Khum
2) http://duas.org/ghadirkhutba.htm
This is another Shia source and it claims to have the complete speech at Ghadir e Khum with a long list of references at the end , some of them by authors respected even by Sunnis. The problem is the whole speech is a composite of many parts, each presented by a different source; no one authority has the whole speech and it is not clear who is the author of which part.
3) https://gift2shias.com/2013/10/24/hadith-of-ghadir-khumm-a-sunni-perspective/
This 40 page article lays out the Sunni view of Ghadir e Khum. One may read all the pages or just the following to get the gist of it: pages 4,8,9,18,19,and 37.
Of course there are many more sources a reader can consult and then make their own decisions as to what transpired that day.
Then the events following the death of the Prophet and the declaration of Abu Bakr as the Khalifa at Saquifah was presented. For that I used the above quoted two books and the following link besides many other accounts I have read. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqifah
At the very outset of my talk I said that my intention was not to decide which one is the “real” Islam but to inform one side what the other believes in and why; hopefully that may lead to a better understanding of the other’s position and perhaps even some respect. 
I understand that Shias would have wanted Ali to be the first successor to the Prophet – or even the second or third – but what happened 1400 years ago cannot be reversed and holding that grudge against present day Sunnis is non productive. By the same token, because of the split those events created, a different theology and different religious practices developed in Shi’ism over time and most of those also cannot be reversed. So calling Shias by the many pejorative terms is equally non-productive.
Muslims go to churches and synagogues telling their congregants how we all have the same prophets, how we are all people of the Book and how we are tolerant of other religions ( lakum deenakum walaya deen is oft quoted in those interfaith dialogues). Why can’t we extend the same acceptance to each other and the same respect to each other? We are more similar than we are to Christians and Jews with whom we proudly have interfaith dialogues. The only other alternative is the continuation of blaming, hating, fighting and killing each other for the next 1400 years.