[averkif]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Does anybody respect you in real life? I'm sure a whopping 12% support aneeshm.

[GinaGomesz]

I bet you significantly more then 1% of the American population would rank religion as more important then their country... I suppose we need to worry now about people in the bible belt suicide bombing retail outlets?

[actioliGalm]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Even if we assume that they're all children (which I know isn't the case, but I'm assuming it for the sake of discussion), and that only one percent of them retain their opinions, and everyone else discards them, that leaves 650,000 people who are willing to provide some sort of support to SIMI-like anti-national organisations. Yeah but it leaves about 1.4 million who are willing to hunt them down and kill them. If this group can manage to eke out even a 1:2 kill ratio when they finally come into conflict you're still covered, so no worries mate.

Perhaps the next poll should ask whether their conflict should be televised. I smell big bucks here.

[Patgaepx]

Re the OP -- Here's what strikes me: one would assume that you are a reasonably representative voice of young, educated India, and yet you spend an inordinate amount of your free time Muslim-bashing on the Internet.

If you're the future of India, why wouldn't an Indian Muslim value his religion above his country?

[justashonglefan]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

Re the OP -- Here's what strikes me: one would assume that you are a reasonably representative voice of young, educated India, and yet you spend an inordinate amount of your free time Muslim-bashing on the Internet.
First of all, I'm probably completely non-representative of a young and educated Indian (meaning that I'm young and educated, but not representative, not that I'm not old or uneducated ). Most people among my peers don't give a damn about anything further than the next six months, or the next step.

TBH, an analysis of different religions and their impacts on India takes up only a very, very small fraction of my time. But that's the only bit you see, because that's the only bit which I post here, mostly. The vast majority of my time is spent on other, much more constructive interests, such a reading all sorts of technical and non-technical stuff, trawling the internet for interesting things, meeting interesting people (in real life, not the internet), and so on. Everything - the analysis of religions and cultures, the interest in science and technology, in doing and building interesting new things, all of these are geared towards building a coherent view of the world, and gaining knowledge and wisdom, which may be then used for whatever purpose I see fit.

It's been quite difficult so far, and will probably get more difficult with time.

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

If you're the future of India, why wouldn't an Indian Muslim value his religion above his country?
I'm not the future of India. I'm a part of that insignificantly small minority who will actually try to do something about problems confronting the nation instead of sitting on our asses and doing nothing when disaster stares us in the face. We may succeed, we may fail, I don't know, but I can only try and hope.

When certain ideologies get in the way of progress (Islam meddles so much with the material world that it should not be dignified with the name "religion"), I feel quite irritated, and try to find a solution.

The solution is not hatred, not bigotry, not alienation, but reform. But that can happen only when people at large acknowledge that a problem exists. By obstinately hiding our head in the sand, maintaining that "Islam teh peace teh!!!", and blaming either "outside elements" or "people wanting to disturb the peace" or "the fringe" or "communal elements", basically everything but the ideology itself, and not facing reality, we impede the reform process. The problem is that to reform, Islam must destroy itself, because the minute you admit that Mohammed made a goof, that's it, the entire authoritarian structure collapses. So what is to be done? I don't know, but I try to do my bit by trying to make people acknowledge that at least a problem exists.




And I don't have double standards, as most people do in these cases. I've seen far too many Hindus defending bullshit if it is there in one of their favoured books. Spineless cowards, I call them. If Chanakya could disagree with everyone who went before, and single-handedly engineer two golden ages, what prevents us from doing the same? If something is wrong, then it is wrong irrespective of who says it is right. So if there are chauvinist and anti-feminine elements in the Puranas, then I denounce those elements. If there is a wrong injunction in an ancient law-book, I don't try to defend it like the Bible-thumpers do. I don't have to. My tradition doesn't care if all the books are thrown out. It's not built on authority. It's built on a search for truth, and its manifestation in this world, dharma. Dharma is not affected if I reject a book. What is right and wrong does not change with a book's endorsement or opposition.

I accept no authority but my own.

It is very difficult to admit that you or your tradition was wrong, but it has to be done, if you want to move on to greater things. Within Hinduism, this most difficult step has been taken - all the great teachers, saints, seers, of this century, and the past century, too, have admitted that the evils that existed (and still sometimes exist) in the Indic system are wrong, and should be removed. And it hasn't been an apologetic admission that it may have been wrong,, or that those times were different - it's been strident, and consistent, that what is corrupt is corrupt, and what is bad is just plain bad, no matter the time.

How long, I wonder, before the Muslims have the courage to admit - "Mohammed goofed"?

[Erexecike]

Originally posted by aneeshm


These are precisely the sort of injustices and problems I want to remove from India. Whoever is responsible for this is a total a$$hole, and has to be brought to book.

Gosh. Good luck...

In India Stefan visits some of the world's poorest and most oppressed people.

More than 160 million people in the country are classed as Dalits and are considered "Untouchable".

Tainted by their birth they enter a caste system that condemns them to an inescapable cycle of poverty, illiteracy and oppression.

Nowhere is this discrimination more evident than with food.

The "Untouchables" are not allowed to eat in the same places or even touch the same plates of other castes.

Stefan ventures to India's most lawless state, Bihar, to meet Dalits who work the land. He meets a particular sub-caste known as "Rat-Eaters" and joins them in the fields where they live up to their name: catching, roasting and eating rat.

But it is not only poverty and discrimination they face. Stefan tracks down an "upper caste army" whose aim is to keep the Dalits in their place, often violently attacking them.
aneeshm versus the 'upper caste army'...

How the poor die:

In turn, higher-caste landholders have retaliated by forming private militias, known as senas (armies), to fight the Naxalites and terrorize and kill low-caste villagers whom they believe to have provided support to the Naxalites, or who have organized to demand better wages and other reforms. Hundreds of Dalits have been killed in sena attacks since the early 1990s. The attacks frequently take place at night; in many cases, the victims, including women and children, have been shot in their beds while they were sleeping. Members of the senas have also raped women and girls during the attacks. They have often claimed responsibility for the attacks and have even announced beforehand which villages they planned to target. However, because the senas enjoy the patronage of powerful elites, they operate with impunity. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-06.htm


Have guns, will massacre:

[pipojambo]

The Muslims in Europe are immigrants, or their relatively recent descendents. The Muslims in India are native.

[Qualarrizab]

Originally posted by EyesOfNight
They're a god damn disease, they'll never be able to integrate into western society, and they'll always be at odds with us. We should be looking for the cure . Gosh, don't you sound familiar...


Don't think that one can fight against disease without killing the cause, without exterminating the germ; and don't think that one can fight against racial tuberculosis without taking care that the peoples be freed of the germ of racial tuberculosis.