( Shared By Tahir Mahmood)
Gitmo Prison Guard Converts From Atheism To Islam After Seeing Detainees ‘Wake Each Day And Smile’ Cick link below to read and listen to CNN Radio.
Gitmo Prison Guard’s Conversion To Islam ( CNN Radio )
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Author Archives: Editors
My Travels to Vietnam & Cambodia-In Pictures
By Fayyaz Sheikh
When we think of Vietnam and Cambodia, rice fields and jungles come to mind but these are beautiful countries with rich history, that were unfortunately ravaged by wars. We started our travel from North ( Hanoi) and then traveled south. Our guide took us first to Hanoi Museum and we saw following pictures;
Buraq-It took Prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to Sky. It has Human’s head, horse’s body, cock’s tail and great wings
Attached to the picture was following description.
Quran in Arabic text
Quran in Chinese text
Raden Maulana (1465-1525) used puppets to teach Islam in Indonesia.
In Saigon we visited a Mosque. There were Halal food restaurants near the mosque.
Mosque in Saigon
RELIGION IN VIETNAM AND CAMBODIA
Majority of the population, about 90 %, is Buddhist. There is immense influence of Hindu religion and culture on the society. Religion is a big part of society and Buddhist Temples are everywhere, many converted from Hindu temples to Buddhist temples. As per our guide, Hindu religion came to this part in 1st B.C. when one Brahman came from India,married a local princess and then became a ruler.This whole region practiced Hinduism until 12th century and then started converting to Buddhism. There was some Muslim population, called Chams. There is a Muslim town in Vietnam called ‘ Mubarak’. At present there are about 70,000 Muslims and about 40,000 Hindu in Vietnam.Pictures bellow tell the story of Hindu religion in Vietnam. Some were part of Buddhist temples.
Brahmanist Goddess
Template in Sansikrat
An old Buddhist temple in Cambodia with large tree growing in temple. Movie ” Tomb Raiders” with Angelina jollie was filmed in this temple.
CULTURE
The northern part ( Hanoi) is more conservative with traditional family values and women mostly wear beautiful traditional dress. As you travel south, it gradually changes and in Saigon you see women mostly in western casual dresses. Men mostly wear casual western dress both in North and South.Food is mostly sea food and rice, but some of the dishes has Indian flavor and spices.Indian restaurants serve very spicy food. In general people are happy, very loving and welcoming. Some pictures:
Door attendant at Hanoi Sheraton with traditional dress.
Ladies posing for picture in traditional dress
Food served
Delicious Lamb Chops with Desi flavor
Delicious mangoes are also available
In old times Huts were used for living and has different shapes in different part of the country, and some with separate entrances for females.
Hut with separate entrance for male and female. Female entrance has Breast sign at stair
Now many Huts are being replaced by brick “skinny houses” with very small frontage, because lesser the frontage, lower the property taxes.
In future installments trip to beautiful Halon Bay, Hoi An, Hue, Saigon, Saigon Vietnam War Museum( local feeling and impression about Vietnam War) , Phenom Penh, Siem Reip, Singapore, Kualalumpur and Tokyo.
Thanks!
Fayyaz
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Candidates in Pakistan vote face Oddball Questions
( Shared by Nasik Elahi. After reading, one does not know whether to laugh or cry)
Associated Press
SEBASTIAN ABBOT – 8 hrs ago
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Aslam Khan Khattak passed his first — and perhaps most curious — test this week in his quest to become a member of Pakistan’s parliament: He correctly named the first person to walk on the moon.
The question was posed to Khattak by Pakistani judges, who have provoked both laughter and criticism in recent days in their vetting of potential candidates in the country’s upcoming national elections with queries that have veered between the controversial and the bizarre.
One candidate was prodded to spell the word graduation. Another was quizzed on the lyrics of the national anthem. A third was asked how she would manage to serve as a lawmaker with two young children at home.
Many candidates were forced to recite Islamic prayers to prove they were devout Muslims, and one — a prominent journalist — was disqualified because one of his newspaper columns was deemed to have ridiculed Pakistan’s ideology.
“The manner in which the exercise of screening election candidates is being conducted cannot even be termed as childis,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said in an editorial Friday. “It is far worse.”
The source of the problem, according to critics, is a pair of articles in Pakistan’s constitution — 62 and 63 — introduced in the 1980s by former military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq that govern who is eligible to serve in parliament.
The former dictator sought to intensify the religious nature of the majority Muslim country, and article 62 stipulates a lawmaker “has adequate knowledge of Islamic teachings and practices obligatory duties prescribed by Islam.” It also mandates a candidate must be honest and has not “worked against the integrity of the country or opposed the ideology of Pakistan.”
Although the articles have been in the constitution for years, they haven’t played a significant role in past elections. But the Supreme Court has pressed judges vetting thousands of candidates to enforce the law more strictly in the run-up to the May 11 parliamentary election in an attempt to weed out corrupt politicians and those who may have broken basic laws, such as not paying their taxes, a common abuse in Pakistan.
The election will mark the first transition between democratically-elected governments in the 65-year history of Pakistan, a country that has experienced three military coups and constant political instability.
Former military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf returned to Pakistan recently to contest the election in four different constituencies, which is allowed in the country. But his nomination papers were rejected in one constituency in central Punjab province Friday because he did not meet the criteria in articles 62 and 63, said lawyer Javed Kasuri, who filed a complaint against Musharraf.
Weeding out corrupt lawmakers is widely supported in Pakistan, where public graft is alleged to be rampant. But the decision by some judges to make candidates recite verses from Islam’s holy book, the Quran, to prove they are good Muslims has sparked outrage.
Officials “don’t have the right to determine who is a good Muslim and who is a bad Muslim, and they must not reject nomination papers just because someone could not recite verses from the Quran,” said Asma Jehangir, one of Pakistan’s top human rights activists.
She said the people of Pakistan should have the right to decide the fate of these candidates themselves.
The decision of a judge in Punjab on Thursday to reject the nomination papers of Ayaz Amir, a prominent journalist and national lawmaker, also generated significant controversy.
Amir said the judge told him that an article he wrote about famous newspaper columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee after the man’s death last year ridiculed Pakistan’s ideology — a hotly debated subject in a country that has many competing storylines. The judge did not mention what was specifically wrong with the article, which discussed Amir’s friendship with Cowasjee.
“It was a case of illiteracy. The judge didn’t understand what I wrote in English,” said Amir, who plans to appeal the ruling. “Nothing was against the ideology of Pakistan.”
Amir wrote in the newspaper The News on Friday that the government should repeal articles 62 and 63 because they give too much power to religious leaders in the country. Politicians have been hesitant to act for fear of appearing un-Islamic.
“Every society has its share of outright fools, holding forth as if they have a direct line to heaven, but few societies give fools such a free rein as we seem to do,” wrote Amir.
Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan, the secretary of Pakistan’s election commission, said the problem was that the judges are dealing with subjective issues that need to be standardized, likely by the Supreme Court.
“All these things need to be debated very seriously,” said Khan. “These are very serious issues that have implications for the democratic process.”
The election commission stirred a bit of controversy itself when it forwarded a proposal to the government this week to add to the ballot the choice of “none of the above” — admittedly one that many Pakistanis might support given their low opinion of the country’s politicians. Khan, the election commission secretary, said the organization was just following the Supreme Court’s order.
Some of the questions asked by the judges clearly seemed to fall outside the purview of determining a candidate’s eligibility according to the law, prompting The Express Tribune newspaper to say the process had taken “a turn for the weird.”
Zahid Iqbal, a candidate from the Sunni Tehreek party in the southern city of Karachi, was asked for the correct abbreviation of a bachelor of law degree and the spelling of the word graduation, said the party’s spokesman, Fahim Sheikh. Iqbal failed on both counts, and the judge is expected to decide his fate Friday, said Sheikh.
Former Punjab provincial lawmaker Shamshad Gohar said a judge asked her how many children she had.
“When I said I have two children, aged seven and 11, he said, ‘Your children are too young and how will you manage to look after them after becoming a lawmaker,'” said Gohar, who assured the judge she could handle it.
Perhaps the strangest question was put to Khattak in Karachi, who was asked to name the first person to step on the moon. When Khattak said it was Neil Armstrong, the judge quickly asked who next stepped on the moon. Khattak said it was also Armstrong since he was not disabled and had use of both of his legs.
His candidacy was approved.
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Religion Without God & Religious Atheism
( Is atheism a religion? )
BY Ronald Dworkin ( A Book review)
An interesting take on religion, God and atheism .Some excerpts from the review;
“The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious. They say that though they do not believe in a “personal” god, they nevertheless believe in a “force” in the universe “greater than we are.” They feel an inescapable responsibility to live their lives well, with due respect for the lives of others; they take pride in a life they think well lived and suffer sometimes inconsolable regret at a life they think, in retrospect, wasted”
“There are famous and poetic expressions of the same set of attitudes. Albert Einstein said that though an atheist he was a deeply religious man:
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.1”
“Percy Bysshe Shelley declared himself an atheist who nevertheless felt that “The awful shadow of some unseen Power/Floats though unseen among us….”
“Judges often have to decide what “religion” means for legal purposes. For example, the American Supreme Court had to decide whether, when Congress provided a “conscientious objection” exemption from military service for men whose religion would not allow them to serve, an atheist whose moral convictions also prohibited service qualified for the objection. It decided that he did qualify.4The Court, called upon to interpret the Constitution’s guarantee of “free exercise of religion
“So the phrase “religious atheism,” however surprising, is not an oxymoron; religion is not restricted to theism just as a matter of what words mean. But the phrase might still be thought confusing. Would it not be better, for the sake of clarity, to reserve “religion” for theism and then to say that Einstein, Shelley, and the others are “sensitive” or “spiritual” atheists? But on a second look, expanding the territory of religion improves clarity by making plain the importance of what is shared across that territory. Richard Dawkins says that Einstein’s language is “destructively misleading” because clarity demands a sharp distinction between a belief that the universe is governed by fundamental physical laws, which Dawkins thought Einstein meant, and a belief that it is governed by something “supernatural,” which Dawkins thinks the word “religion” suggests.”
“The zealots have great political power in America now, at least for the present. The so-called religious right is a voting bloc still eagerly courted.”
“ Militant atheism, though politically inert, is now a great commercial success. No one who called himself an atheist could be elected to any important office in America, but Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion (2006) has sold millions of copies here, and dozens of other books that condemn religion as superstition crowd bookstores.”
Click below to read full review;
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/religion-without-god/