It is quite a sorry situation to be in, when all you’ve got to do is think about thinking.
Thinking about God, because He just has to be there. It makes more sense that way. If you still fall for the elitist ‘religion is opium for the masses’ crap, then that’s your ego getting in your way. Ego has a habit of doing that. But then that gets me thinking about us, us as in you and me and this country and this world. OK rewind back a bit, let’s stick with the country bit for a while.
I’ve been thinking about our country and agendas, to be more precise. Consider:
Mr Zaid Hamid
There has been a recent unceremonious exit of the much famed Mr. Zaid Hamid from the public conscious, although it may be temporary. Quite a personality, this Mr. Hamid. He is a complete study in the art of public speaking, much like Dr Israr Ahmad is. Both are great public speakers, with a great stage presence and both say things that rile up a crowd, get their emotions pumping like a Ford Mustang on heat and then what? What’s their agenda? Knowing the agenda is essential for sanity to prevail and you to decide either to listen to someone or not. Dr Israr wants you to join his political non-political party, that his agenda. Sorry, not for me. And Mr Zaid Hamid wants to make you angry. But that’s pretty much all that Mr Zaid Hamid and Dr Israr has in common. While Dr Israr, although insisting that we should either join his party or make our own, tells us to go back to the sources of the Quran and Hadith, Mr Zaid Hamid tell us to be angry at India, Israel, Zionists bastards and the USA. Bastards all of them, I am sure. I fear a lot of people, including Mr Zaid Hamid, uses language a bit too loosely. When you say that ‘Jews are the enemy,’ then you mean that Jews are the enemy, not ‘only those Jews that subscribe to the Zionist school of thought’. I understand where you are coming from, Mr Hamid, but language is a powerful tool and you of all the people, know it.
It is the hatred that gets to be preached, day in day out, that rots the society at its core. I hate them because I have been told they want to kill my family. I do not bother to ‘verify’, I do not bother to ‘go to the sources’, finding it intellectually easy to just ‘listen to the guy on the TV’. That is pretty much human nature right there, this intellectual laziness. That is why we have teachers in all facets of life and at all stages of a human knowledge. But without verifying from the sources, you are not being a good student. If you do not have the patience and tenacity to keep your beak shut till you have verified from the root, then you probably still need to learn how to learn. It is pure injustice to not only yourself, but everyone around you, to be considered learned if you have missed out on the first thing of learning i.e. to be shut up and work (mostly to verify).
Speaking of injustices, then there is a problem of justice. Not the chief justice, but justice in general. It is my understanding that all hell that is upon Pakistan, all the hours spent in darkness, all the times shivering starting at cold heaters, all the shivers down your spine because this bomb was way closer to your house than the one a few days ago, all of this and the drones, the mega corruption, the presidents and the law ministers and more, all these problems can be tracked back to the inability of our powers-to-be to provide justice. Plain and simple, that’s the truth. But justice do get delivered, but only late and for the wrong reasons. Consider the case of Mr Zaid Hamid again. I have had a problem with Mr Hamid’s monologues for quite some time, purely because it is my belief that we as a nation do not need emotional tirades, we need a zen-like approach to problems, much like what Javed Ghamidi and his cool-as-a-cucumber-on-ice-in-a-freezer-in-the-Antartic methods. I see Mr Zaid Hamid as a great debater but only on the wrong side of the motion, if you’ve ever been into speeches and debates. That was and is my only problem with Zaid Hamid sahib and that is that I do not know his agenda. He first does what I don’t think is right, get people all emotional using some wrong notions – wrong because I verified them. But that is not the reason Zaid Hamid sahib gets so much heat from the ‘free media’ i.e. bloggers and channels with half a brain and a dictionary. What is the ‘problem’ that most people quote about Zaid Hamid? That Zaid Hamid was a ‘khalifah’ for the false prophet Yusuf Kazzab. After watching a very concise rebuttal by Mr Zaid Hamid himself, I was aptly convinced that the case of Mr Yusuf Ali was nothing but that of justice mangled and skewered on the fires of corruption and plain ol’ greed (those interested, search for Yusuf Ali and Zaid Hamid on YouTube). As things stand now, I had no knowledge of the case of Yusuf Ali, nor of Zaid Hamid’s connections with him, but only what I have read on blogs here and there. Then I see Mr Hamid quoting judgments and articles. To me now, it seems that the case built up against Yusuf Ali, and hence against Zaid Hamid for supporting a false prophet, is pretty much hogwash. I can, of course, be wrong in this assumption as well. So what of all the people trying to tell you that ‘do not listen to Zaid Hamid, he is a supporter of a false prophet”? The moment one finds out that the allegations against Yusuf Ali were false, your case against Zaid Hamid crumbles with it. Because given the dire nature of the accusation, you have used the association of Zaid Hamid with a false prophet to your advantage, not even bothering to research the truth. The moment you do that, you realize that there is no case. But the damage has already been done, and now all your other points, that may or may not hold water, are not considered by anyone, because you built your case on a false, ill-researched proposition. It’s like bringing down Capone on charges of tax evasion, although they really wanted him for all the murders and smuggling the guy had allegedly done. If there is no justice in a society, then people use non-just ways of bringing you down, which further goes to prove that the society on the whole in unjust. The cycle not only continues, but algorithmically intensifies.
Intensity then gets me thinking about solar power. I have been working on solar power for the past few weeks. It is very much a possibility, that much everyone knows so I won’t bore you with that. I will bore you with the fact that it is now somewhat within reach. Consider: you can ‘solarize’ your house, except the Air Conditioner and the Freezer, for less than eight hundred thousand rupees. Anything that has a compressor in it, apart from that, all things run on FREE POWER for 24 hours a day, seven friggin’ days a week. You can now kiss WAPDA and load shedding good bye (more of a shove and slap than a kiss, but figurative speech sucks anyways).
Speaking of kisses and shoves and slaps, wonder what our government is doing about the ‘American’ situation. Obama’s
in Af-Pak (wait, it’s still not a place). Will he come here? Will I go to the side of the road to welcome him, like they show in the movies? Ha! They’d close down Pakistan for three days so Obama can zip across the Mall to pay homage to Data Darbar. And Zardari sahib will probably trim his mustaches too this time.
Loved the Article, it was moving, no really, it was, for a change, not like the usual blogs who one way or the other preach Hatred, for the government, for the media or for any darn thing that you don’t like, and most importantly You were unbiased. But then again, i have an objection, and you know such a controversial topic could not pass away without one.
Anyways coming back to it when you said the allegations against Yussuf were false, I have done a bit of Research on it as well, couldn’t do much about Zahid Hamid because he has been hidden mostly apart from now when he started Brasstech. But then because he actually helped Yussuf sell his beliefs to the masses, I have a reasonable doubt on him aswell. Yussuf might have been misunderstood as to be claiming Prophet hood, maybe he just wasn’t maybe he was so intensely in love with the Prophet that he felt himself as a part of him. But let me remind you again, In Islam, any act that tends to damage or dent the beliefs of other brother n sister Muslims is forbidden. I have two examples for this, in the early ages the followers of certain Prophets or Saints made Statues or Monuments out of love for them, after they died. Just to remember them, the statues were a way to remember their preachers for the early generations, but eventually the generations to come started following them in a more controversial way. They would make wishes and make prayers to the Statues as they were supposedly considered holy, Eventually those Statues turned into Gods, and this is how I believe Hinduism came to existence. I did a research on this, and my conclusion is, that Hinduism is the worst form of the Mazar system that we currently have in Islam. They were monuments and statues to remember the Preachers and Prophets who spread the word of God, but eventually the statues became Gods for the coming Generations. This is why Statues and Monuments were broken in Khanna Kabbah, when taken over by Prophet Muhammad SAW, it was not because statues itself or making statues of loved ones was considered wrong, it was because it had a tendency to make genuine followers deviate from the actual followings. The same is the case with Mazar or Shrine system that we have, the early generations made the Shrine’s just as a symbol of love for the Sufis and the Messengers of Allah who preached the word, but today these Shrine’s are contradicting and creating shirk in the actual beliefs that we follow in Islam. The Shrine’s should therefore be banned and anybody who does make one, should be punished, despite the fact if they are making it out of love or if they consider those Shrine’s as a place to worship those laid beneath it. Similarly, you remember the incident of Anal Haq, a man who was so carried away with his love for God that he eventually claimed that he was God, because every part of his body was for God, made by God and dedicated for the love of God. Even though the gist of what he was saying was right, and even though his intentions were right the current Ruler then cut of his head and said “Even though what you say might be right, and i understand your love and your message, but for those who might not understand you, it would create shirk and eventually mislead followers”.
So what I am trying to tell you brother is, that even if Yussaf might have been blinded with the love of Prophet and would have claimed him to be a part of Muhammad SAW in the most Holy and Pure way(for which I have also doubts but not the point), the message had the tendancy to make people deviate and create shirk. And it did, people actually did consider him a Prophet and his followers would consider themselves Sahabi, even though Yussuf might not have intended it. But he should have been punished, along with the People who actually helped sell & spread his beliefs including Mr. Zahid Hamid.
I hope you get my point, May Allah guide us all towards the right path. Ameen.
Wow, Sharjeel. A very well thought out comment. Nice.
The thing is, Yusuf Ali never made any claims of prophethood or anything. Even scholars from our own society GAVE TESTIMONY to this fact. Yusuf Ali was ‘framed’ and only ONE newspaper carried the story, because that newspaper was the one framing Yusuf Ali.
The beliefs of Mr Yusuf Ali, as is my understanding, were the same as many ‘great’ sufis, although he someohow became the target of an attack by a newspaper. I only have Zaid Hamid’s own story to support my views, so it is better to reconfirm. BUT I STRONGLY suggest that you watch the video Mr Hamid has put up. I have hardly agreed with Mr Zaid Hamid, but I am trying to call a wrong a wrong.
I totally agree that someone’s love for someone can and does blind them and can make them do things that are not right to begin with. But I am not sure that Yusuf Ali’s was the same case.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts m’man. Maybe we can play on that at Neo? 😛
Done, NeoMatrix… And your right about literature available towards Yussuf, only one source confirms his allegation. And in the same way only one source defends it, so it is a fifty fifty call. Will watch the Video and try to dig in a bit deeper.