Camel and tents
One thing I’d like to do in my lifetime is travel by camel from Mecca to Medina. I know it will take a long time, but I wonder if I can get something enlightening out of it.
Archive for Uncategorized
Earth from Saturn: the pale blue dot
I saw this photo while perusing The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006. That little dot is Earth, taken from a spacecraft passing Saturn. Masha Allah 
, beautiful stuff. From the site:
That dot in the center of the image is the Earth. It’s us. Cassini was nearly one billion miles from us when it took this image, orbiting a giant ball of gas as exotic and alien as any place we can imagine. From such a terribly removed location, the entire Earth is reduced to a single point of light, just one among an anonymous many as seen from our robotic proxy as our generation, for the first time in all of history, seeks out our neighborhood and takes a really good look.
It reminds me of what Carl Sagan said about a similar picture from a few years before:
“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
As my friend Imran once told me, “Imran means a beautiful scene, you look at it and you go ‘wow’.” Even atheists have this wonderment of the creation of the universe. While we call it a miracle in the religion and a feeling of being created, they call it the “numinous” and someone who sees it feels deeply moved.
India-centric tidbits
The practice of female infanticide is so widespread that India is considering baby drop-off points throughout the country.
Spices are ranked on a scale of Scoville heat units, with the average chili being 10,000. The world record hottest chili, Bhut Jolokia, is found in India and comes in at 1,001,304 Scoville heat units.
Human Rights Watch has a long report about India’s discrimination problems with Untouchables. Apparently, PM Singh compared it to apartheid in December, and was the first PM to openly condemn it. There are 58,000 reported cases of rapes and assaults against them. Upsetting examples in the report.
Ok, he’s not technically Indian, but I’ll include it anyway. A Bengali cab driver returned a woman’s lost case of 31 diamond rings, even after she only gave him a 30-cent tip. Who says Muslims don’t do anything good?
Thanks to Sepia Mutiny for the info.
Dreams about Me?
After Jummah, the imam turned to me as everyone was meeting and greeting each other, and he said “I had a dream with you in it.” “What was it about?” I asked, but he had to talk to someone about something important.
I IMmed him later.
me: im curious what your dream was about involving me
imam: i cant remember off the top of my head
imam: i know we were getting hit with arrows
…OK, now I am so curious…
My favorite of Haroon’s Contentions
Taken from Haroon’s (now defunct) Blog: Avari. Part 1
1. Paradise is under mothers and swords. Both defend.
9. The more you love Allah , the more others despise you.
22. The revolutionaries shall perish, the reformists shall perish, the status quo shall perish.
23. Every man and woman I meet has something of me.
30. When men pray to saints, they do not draw themselves closer to God. Quite the opposite.
40. An army is nice. A strategy is better. Both together are best.
45. The Ka‘bah is a cube because the world is a sphere.
47. Arrogance produces ignorance and ignorance produces arrogance. There’s a reason “bigot” sounds like “idiot.”
48. Islamic Matrimony: If you like a girl, she doesn’t like you. If a girl likes you, you don’t like her. If you both like each other, your families don’t like each other. If your families like each other, something is wrong. Find out what.
49. Be careful what you wish for: Israel suffers because Zionism prospered.
57. It is not enough to have faith. One must also suffer it.
59. A prayer in the heart is worth twenty-seven in the head.
62. The Muslim world is afraid of its future. The West is afraid of its past.
71. Email reminds you of how irregularly people think of you.
81. Mad Mullah-ism: Less(er) jihad is more.
82. White Muslims are like white chocolate. Somehow they’re still brown.
83. Islam rejects the cycle of rebirth. Sequels not only suck, they also spoil the original.
Plus, the sequel, (Part 3)
4. Who likes Ruh Afza? And why? And can we punish them?
38. Looking too far into the past risks blindness. Looking too far into the future promises paralysis.
40. You can rely on God, but you cannot blame Him.
50. The Muslim countdown: Eight occupied countries, seven heavens, six beliefs, five prayers, four wives, three repeats, two destinations, One God.
War Crimes Trial, 2010
Courtesy of Billmon.
Defendants in the dock at the Anglo-American War Crimes Trial of 2010, held at The Hague under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Of the 20 defendants shown here — the so-called “Republican Guard” — only one (Alan Greenspan, second row, second from right) was found not guilty, on the grounds that the destruction of the American economy and the global financial crash of 2008, while regrettable, did not constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva Convention…
Another defendant (Ari Fleischer, front row, extreme right) received only a light sentence, as the court determined that lying to the American people was too common a crime to merit more severe punishment. In a more controversial decision, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was spared any prison time at all, after the judges ruled that being seated between former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers for the entire eight-month trial constituted “punishment enough.”
Former Vice President Richard Cheney (second row, extreme left), who feigned narcolepsy throughout most of the trial, was committed to the newly established United Nations Hospital for the Criminally Insane, as was former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (next to Cheney), who insisted on being addressed as “Mrs. Bush” during the the trial.
The remaining defendants were sentenced to life terms at the Guantanamo War Crimes Penitentiary — the same facility used to imprison the remaining leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, whose own war crimes trial began shortly after this picture was taken.
Flood in Al-Haram?
Religious Pluralism
There are several varieties of Religious Pluralism. Pluralism, as you may know, is an objection to religious exclusivism (though there is a wide range of exclusivists all the way to inclusionists).
- Extreme Pluralism: the view that all religious beliefs are equally valid and true. You could dismiss this easily, as many religions have incompatible beliefs, ie. Monotheism versus Polytheism. Anthony Wallace, an anthropologist, estimated that in 10,000 years, there have been at least 100,000 religions. Two contradicting claims cannot both be true, so most people reject this.
- Fundamental Teachings Pluralism: the view that the essential teachings of all major religions are true. Not all the beliefs, mind you, but the essential ones. Not everyone agrees on whether you can eat pork or whether purgatory exists, but there is a shared belief in a Supreme Being, piety and virtue, and an afterlife where justice is meted out. The problem with this idea is people can’t seem to draw the line on what is “fundamental” in beliefs. Christianity believes in the Trinity, Islam and Judaism don’t. Theravada Buddhists believe that there is no personal God. However, no religion allows murder.
- Cafeteria Pluralism: the view that religious truth lies in a mix and combination of beliefs drawn from many different religions. This is becoming popular and new-age; people pick and choose beliefs from many different religious traditions. It’s attractive to many people who are uncomfortable with the religion in which they were raised. There are two main problems with this. First, doctrines don’t work well outside the framework they were created in. Reincarnation doesn’t mesh with Christianity or Islam, both of which believe in a Judgement Day. Second, even if you mix the beliefs, why should you or anyone else think that those beliefs are true? Most contemporary theologians agree that few specific religious doctrines can be rationally justified without referring to divine revelation. It’s just wishful thinking; would God really scatter His revelations to the children of Israel and the Hindus? The Muslims argue that both received nearly identical Revelation but were corrupted over time. Other than personal religious experience, people can’t really claim that their personal beliefs mix is the Truth and everyone else is mistaken.
- Transcendental Pluralism: the view that all major religious traditions are in contact with the same ultimate divine reality, but this reality is experienced and conceptualized differently within these various traditions. Recently John Hick defended this in 1989. He admits that the religions cannot all be true, there is too much contradiction. However, he argues that there is an important sense in which all the great religions are equally valid and true. His idea is supposed to use Immanuel Kant’s distinctions between things as they exist and how we perceive them. Thus, God (the Ultimate Reality) is transcendent and ineffable. People perceive it through different lenses; some see Him as personal, some focus on Him being absolute. Hick concluded that all the great religions are equally valid and true, because he felt they were all in touch with God and the Reality, and were all equally effective paths to salvation. However, this has many problems; one cannot say that God is both one and many, both the Sustainer and not the Sustainer. Can you believe that your religion is nothing but myths but conducive to relating to God properly? Can you still be “Christian” if you don’t believe in any of its unique tenets? Alvin Plantinga pointed out that Hick’s over-broad definition seems impossible without doublethink or bad faith; you would have to accept that your religion’s beliefs are no more true than any other, yet you still cling to it for some sort of benefit.
Religious pluralism is more of a postulate; it is quite difficult to prove that no religion is closer to the truth than others. Often it is a reaction against “hard exclusivists” who argue that salvation and reality are found in only a single religion. “Soft exclusivists” or inclusivists believe that one religion has it mostly or completely right and all other religions go seriously wrong. They often admit that salvation can occur outside their faith, prompting some to label them “inclusionists.” This standpoint is the most common form of “exclusivism” today. I suppose Religion is percieved by pluralists to be much like politics, you can believe in a single party, or take a more bipartisan stance. If there is no knockdown argument to convince you to join a certain party, what is there to do? A pluralist may argue to give up being on that side, but they rarely produce an argument to prove that nobody is closer to the truth than others.
Source:
Gregory Bassham’s essay “The Religion of The Matrix and the Problems of Pluralism”, in the book The Matrix and Philosophy, by William Irwin
What’s on my iPod
Podcasts:
- Zaytuna Podcast
- Acappella U
- Real Time with Bill Maher
- CNN In Case You Missed It (video)
- ICNYU Lectures
- NYU Islamic Center Khutbahs
- Macintosh Folklore Radio
- macTV
- MAKE Magazine
- Kaplan MCAT Test Day
- Doctors Without Borders
- Mosaic TV
- MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann
- Rocketboom
- Tinku’s World
- Ummah Films
- Washington Square News Arts podcast
Quiz: Nazis or Islamophobes?
Here is a list of 14 quotes. Were they made by Nazis or Islamophobes? You tell me.
