Would you mind terribly if an artist in your country drew humorous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)? Or if a writer made fun of him in a novel? or if an artist painted verses from the Qur'an on to a naked female body?
All these things have been done, and Muslims have reacted with swift outrage, sometimes murder (Theo van Gogh, who filmed a naked women with verses from the Qur'an was murdered and beheaded by a Muslim jihadi).
For these are freedoms of expression - a central tenet of democracy. According to democrats, freedom of expression includes the freedom to shock and offend.
Yet Muslim men and women espouse democracy as if it won't hurt the religion - or the sentiment of 1 billion Muslims. In our country (Bangladesh), we have traitors who would love to make fun of the Prophet and Islam. That is one reason they love democracy.
Yet I know a devout Muslim woman who loves democracy - she doesn't realise, the idiot that she is, that democracy means freedom of expression - freedom to make fun of Islam and everything we consider sacred and holy. She is a misguided fool, who wants to appear an 'intellectual'.
Fundamentalists can take an idea to its logical conclusion - unlike the foolish woman mentioned above. They realise that in a democracy, everything will be permitted - from blasphemy to burning holy books (heaven forbid!).
The second khutbah of the Friday prayers forbid us to criticise our rulers - democracy means criticism of rulers. Surely, democracy was forbidden by our ancestors!
Curse democracy as you would curse the plague or snakes - for it pits brother against brothers, and leaves nothing sacred. Let democracy be preached only by the enemies of Islam and Muslim civilisation. They are friends of the Great Satan.
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
On Argument (essay)
http://southerncrossreview.org/66/sayeed-argument.htm
(click above for essay)
“Two wise men do not contend and quarrel,
Nor does a scholar fight with a contemptible fellow.”
- Sheikh Sa’di
Sheikh Sa’di advises us not to argue: it is a futile endeavour, and levels the fool and the wise person. For the latter, it is best to agree with the former, or remain silent.
(click above for essay)
“Two wise men do not contend and quarrel,
Nor does a scholar fight with a contemptible fellow.”
- Sheikh Sa’di
Sheikh Sa’di advises us not to argue: it is a futile endeavour, and levels the fool and the wise person. For the latter, it is best to agree with the former, or remain silent.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Fallacy of Accent
The fallacy of accent is a favourite of connoisseurs of informal fallacies. The classic example runs as follows.
It is the story of the captain and the first mate. The captain, a stout teetotaler, and the first mate, an inveterate old toper, got along miserably on board. Exasperated with his bibulous subaltern, the captain entered the following in the log: ‘The mate was drunk today’. The mate discovered this and got his own back by recording, when it was his turn to enter the log: ‘The captain was sober today’.
More sinister is the caption under a photograph of two women in chador and sunglasses, laughing at the camera: Not gloom and doom all the time. The implication of gloom and doom almost every living second (except when photographed by a western journalist) in a Muslim country is artfully suppressed.
The most recent example I’ve found is from the inside pages of The Economist (25th April 2009):
“Globalisation, of course, requires global news. But Sir John[Maddox] was equal to that. Henry Gee, another protégé, recalls a trick that Sir John called the “Afghanistan Effect”. “You write a little news story that says that nothing much has happened in Afghanistan, and people think ‘Goodness! Nature has coverage of Afghanistan’.”
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13525812
If the reader finds any other instances of the fallacy of accent, please do let me know.
It is the story of the captain and the first mate. The captain, a stout teetotaler, and the first mate, an inveterate old toper, got along miserably on board. Exasperated with his bibulous subaltern, the captain entered the following in the log: ‘The mate was drunk today’. The mate discovered this and got his own back by recording, when it was his turn to enter the log: ‘The captain was sober today’.
More sinister is the caption under a photograph of two women in chador and sunglasses, laughing at the camera: Not gloom and doom all the time. The implication of gloom and doom almost every living second (except when photographed by a western journalist) in a Muslim country is artfully suppressed.
The most recent example I’ve found is from the inside pages of The Economist (25th April 2009):
“Globalisation, of course, requires global news. But Sir John[Maddox] was equal to that. Henry Gee, another protégé, recalls a trick that Sir John called the “Afghanistan Effect”. “You write a little news story that says that nothing much has happened in Afghanistan, and people think ‘Goodness! Nature has coverage of Afghanistan’.”
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13525812
If the reader finds any other instances of the fallacy of accent, please do let me know.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Of bigotry and logic
It was a bit of a shock for me to get a post script from an OEN (OpEdnews.com) editor (copied below with my reply): the OEN prides itself on its tolerance and breadth of understanding, when in fact, like most American publications, it shares a collective contempt for the Muslim world. How was George Bush guilty in trying to 'civilise' us? It seems the ideas of lunatic leaders find nourishment in secluded, dark and dank liberal crannies.
"Op Ed News Administrator
P.S. I am going to publish this piece but with a caveat. It has only been since the rise of Hamas that the Palestinian movement has been shackled by an Islamic twist. The Palestinian movement itself is a nationalist movement, so that sort of creates a little discordance with the premise of your piece.
And, as an American who is very glad that women in this country do not have an archaic patriarchal system shoved down their throats without a choice, the history of hostility toward women in Arab and other Islamic Cultures would seem to indicate that the hijab, the burkha, and any other contrivance used to pretend that women do not exist, are merely used as tools to allow the prevailing system of patriarchy and domination by religion to continue."
[NB: not one word about my observations regarding female foeticide in India, where Islam, unfortunately has had no impact; not one word about the Indian caste system: all the evil is in the Islamic world; neither did the editor even notice what I had to say about the elegance and diversity of the shalwar-kameez and the saree as opposed to the uniformity of denim pants and T-shirts. He/She has focused, laser-like, on only the hijab - very revealing, that!]
This was my reply to the editor:
"I read your caveat ('A Bangladeshi Bluestocking') with interest.
I assume it was solely meant for me. May I ask why? What purpose did you hope to serve with that little lecture? We are used to being lectured like that, of course, but not all of us accept it with grace.
As a social scientist, I am aware of cultural biases even among the most enlightened editors - I am not going to argue your points (you recently published as essay of mine called "The Body of William Jay"), but such frank expressions of disgust and superiority are quite rare in my personal experience.
I hope in future you will show more respect to me as a writer and desist from lecturing me again.
As for your views regarding Arab and Islamic societies, they are the blind, uninformed prejudices of a typical westerner - I expected better from the OEN. Your collective attempts to 'civilise' us have caused a great deal of misery. But then, I accept that as part of your civilisation, and publish such views openly, instead of taking individuals aside and giving them a private dressing-down, and by means of logic instead of bald assertions of superiority.
Logic is not a westerner's forte."
"Op Ed News Administrator
P.S. I am going to publish this piece but with a caveat. It has only been since the rise of Hamas that the Palestinian movement has been shackled by an Islamic twist. The Palestinian movement itself is a nationalist movement, so that sort of creates a little discordance with the premise of your piece.
And, as an American who is very glad that women in this country do not have an archaic patriarchal system shoved down their throats without a choice, the history of hostility toward women in Arab and other Islamic Cultures would seem to indicate that the hijab, the burkha, and any other contrivance used to pretend that women do not exist, are merely used as tools to allow the prevailing system of patriarchy and domination by religion to continue."
[NB: not one word about my observations regarding female foeticide in India, where Islam, unfortunately has had no impact; not one word about the Indian caste system: all the evil is in the Islamic world; neither did the editor even notice what I had to say about the elegance and diversity of the shalwar-kameez and the saree as opposed to the uniformity of denim pants and T-shirts. He/She has focused, laser-like, on only the hijab - very revealing, that!]
This was my reply to the editor:
"I read your caveat ('A Bangladeshi Bluestocking') with interest.
I assume it was solely meant for me. May I ask why? What purpose did you hope to serve with that little lecture? We are used to being lectured like that, of course, but not all of us accept it with grace.
As a social scientist, I am aware of cultural biases even among the most enlightened editors - I am not going to argue your points (you recently published as essay of mine called "The Body of William Jay"), but such frank expressions of disgust and superiority are quite rare in my personal experience.
I hope in future you will show more respect to me as a writer and desist from lecturing me again.
As for your views regarding Arab and Islamic societies, they are the blind, uninformed prejudices of a typical westerner - I expected better from the OEN. Your collective attempts to 'civilise' us have caused a great deal of misery. But then, I accept that as part of your civilisation, and publish such views openly, instead of taking individuals aside and giving them a private dressing-down, and by means of logic instead of bald assertions of superiority.
Logic is not a westerner's forte."
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
A Defence of Religion
A Defence of Religion
(click link above to read)
Certain western thinkers use rationality as a ground for the superiority of western civilisation, a ground that gives them the moral authority to look down upon, and manipulate, the "irrational". It may come as a shock to them to learn that we are all irrational, equally human.
Excerpt:
Hermes Trismegistos was believed to be Moses' contemporary: his writings gave an alternative account of creation, one in which man played a more central role. God, according to Hermes, had made man fully in his own image – not just as a rational animal, but as a creator in his own right. Man can imitate God, and he can create like the Creator, through alchemical applications – doing away with disease, want and old age. "It was a heady vision, and it gave rise to the notion that, through science and technology, man could bend nature to his wishes. This is essentially the modern view of science, and it should be emphasized that it occurs only in Western civilization. It is probably this attitude that permitted the West to surpass the East, after centuries of inferiority, in the exploitation of the physical world. ("science, history of." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, document.write(new Date().getFullYear()); 2008.) "
Retracing our steps a little, we shall recall the heliocentric preoccupations of Copernicus: these were directly influenced by Hermeticism. Inspired by Platonic mysticism, Hermeticism emphasized the source of light, the sun. The 15th century Florentine translator of both Plato and Hermetic writing, Marsilio Ficino, composed a work that very nearly idolized the sun: the young Copernicus was heavily influenced and went back to his native Poland to work on the problems of the Ptolemaic astronomy.
Therefore, the leading minds of Europe – Paracelsus, John Dee, Comenius, J.V.Andreae, Fludd and Newton – sought in alchemy "the perfection of man by a new method of knowledge" (Eliade, Volume three, p. 261 ).
It would appear, therefore, that modern science would have been quite impossible without religion as a source of inspiration; pace Bertrand Russell, religion contributed more than the calendar to civilisation.
(click link above to read)
Certain western thinkers use rationality as a ground for the superiority of western civilisation, a ground that gives them the moral authority to look down upon, and manipulate, the "irrational". It may come as a shock to them to learn that we are all irrational, equally human.
Excerpt:
Hermes Trismegistos was believed to be Moses' contemporary: his writings gave an alternative account of creation, one in which man played a more central role. God, according to Hermes, had made man fully in his own image – not just as a rational animal, but as a creator in his own right. Man can imitate God, and he can create like the Creator, through alchemical applications – doing away with disease, want and old age. "It was a heady vision, and it gave rise to the notion that, through science and technology, man could bend nature to his wishes. This is essentially the modern view of science, and it should be emphasized that it occurs only in Western civilization. It is probably this attitude that permitted the West to surpass the East, after centuries of inferiority, in the exploitation of the physical world. ("science, history of." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, document.write(new Date().getFullYear()); 2008.) "
Retracing our steps a little, we shall recall the heliocentric preoccupations of Copernicus: these were directly influenced by Hermeticism. Inspired by Platonic mysticism, Hermeticism emphasized the source of light, the sun. The 15th century Florentine translator of both Plato and Hermetic writing, Marsilio Ficino, composed a work that very nearly idolized the sun: the young Copernicus was heavily influenced and went back to his native Poland to work on the problems of the Ptolemaic astronomy.
Therefore, the leading minds of Europe – Paracelsus, John Dee, Comenius, J.V.Andreae, Fludd and Newton – sought in alchemy "the perfection of man by a new method of knowledge" (Eliade, Volume three, p. 261 ).
It would appear, therefore, that modern science would have been quite impossible without religion as a source of inspiration; pace Bertrand Russell, religion contributed more than the calendar to civilisation.
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