Reclaiming Jerusalem’s lost legacy, Interfaith Dialogue, NewAgeIslam.com

Interfaith Dialogue

Reclaiming Jerusalem’s lost legacy

By Saif Shahin

Jerusalem or the abode of peace. A city of walls and cracks, peoples and passers by, culture and commerce, loving and losing. Above all, a city of worship, of religion — or so they say!

For more than half a century, Muslims and Jews have been jousting for Jerusalem. Both say it is among the holiest of their cities, and they have an assortment of archaeological and architectural evidence to support their claims. Neither denies the claims of the other; indeed, for Muslims it is partially so holy because of the same claims that the Jews make upon it. Yet, both want exclusive rights over it.

Lost on both sides is the supreme irony that their thoroughly temporal squabble is in direct defiance of spiritual legacy of the city they are struggling for — the significance of sacrifice.

Jews view Jerusalem, specifically the Old City, as the place where they were forged into a nation for the first time by King David in the 10th century BC. David’s son Solomon built the First Temple of the Jews here as the dwelling place of god. Destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC, a Second Temple was built — which stood until 70 AD, until the Romans pulled it down.

The site of the two temples, the Temple Mount, occupies a central place in Jewish religion and culture. That is why Jews around the world pray facing Jerusalem, and they hope to build a Third Temple there some day.

http://newageislam.com/reclaiming-jerusalems-lost-legacy-/interfaith-dialogue/d/2739

Gallivanting with Ghalib, Islamic Culture, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Culture

Gallivanting with Ghalib

By Saif Shahin

A new translation introduces the master of Urdu romantic poetry to 21st century readers

Many have tried to walk down this path before, but that hasn’t made it any easier to traverse. Poetry, after all, is what is lost in translation and Niazi is acutely aware of the illogicality of his undertaking. But he makes a bold attempt to sneak past the language barrier by beginning the book with a glossary of unusual words, historic characters and incidences, and peculiar idioms found in Ghalib’s poetry.

This helps him convey “the meaning of a thought and a scene created through the elements of language, of cultural, social and religious nuances, and of rare culture-specific idioms” to the 21st century reader. Sample this:

“Besides Qais, no one else entered in the field of action,

The desert was perhaps as narrow as a jealous eye.”

Without the knowledge that Qais was the real name of Majnun, the star-crossed lover of Laila in the Arabic story tradition, it will be difficult for a reader to grasp that ‘field of action’ here refers to being in love and the ‘desert’ to the despair of lost love. Men are also known to go crazy searching for a way out of deserts, just as Majnun went crazy in his love for Laila – another evocation that will easily be lost on an ignorant reader.

http://newageislam.com/gallivanting-with-ghalib/islamic-culture/d/2297

Intellectuals have failed to understand terrorism: Modernism versus Fundamentalism, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Intellectuals have failed to understand terrorism: Modernism versus Fundamentalism

By Saif Shahin

11 Nov, 2009

Violence does not necessarily stem from poverty or conservative orthodoxy

THE APPROACHING anniversary of 26/ 11 brings with it a terror of its own: the bald and bespectacled babble of homespun ‘terrorism experts’. Our cuttlefish commentariat spews inexorable amounts of ink on the subject all times of the year; the news peg is sure to send them into overdrive.

Apart from roasting Pakistan, their well- meaning offerings generally revolve around three central tenets: terrorism springs from the well of poverty into which Indian Muslims have been pushed, the bulk of Indian Muslims are not terrorists, and ‘ modernised’ Muslims will have to stand up against the Deobandi ulema if we are to defeat the scourge.

Unfortunately, not only is much of this not backed by empirical data, but it is also replete with some obvious contradictions. If terrorism springs from poverty, and most Indian Muslims are poor, then why aren’t more and more of them answering the call to arms? And if modernisation is the antithesis of terrorism, then why is it the Deobandis who repeatedly denounce such violence as unIslamic while modernised Muslims — engineers, doctors, scientists — sit on their haunches or, worse, join the terrorist ranks themselves? Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy went to the best English schools, graduating to a top job with a Yahoo! India subsidiary and a salary running into lakhs. One of his brothers is an architect, another is a chest specialist in the UK. His wife is a homoeopathic doctor. He could have been the perfect example of a modern, sociallyintegrated Muslim — only he went on to head the media cell of the Indian Mujahideen ( IM), the only known home- grown Muslim terror outfit. He was the guy who used to send diabolical emails to media houses before terror attacks.

http://newageislam.com/intellectuals-have-failed-to-understand-terrorism--modernism-versus-fundamentalism/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/2081

Why democracy isn’t about vote margins, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

Why democracy isn’t about vote margins

By Saif Shahin

You get to smell Roy’s nausea from the 2002 riots of Gujarat, hear her impassioned plea for those incarcerated in the Parliament attack case, touch the pulse of Istanbul in the wake of Hrant Dink’s assassination, taste the morbidity of President George W. Bush’s visit to India and see the utter pointlessness of our rhetoric- laced reaction to last year’s Mumbai attack.

Her targets are the government, the police, the judiciary and the media — particularly the media.

All along these writings, there is a sixth sense of a deeper malaise, an intuition of a more fundamental fault with the way things are.

This sense is given sensibility in her astutely powerful introduction to the anthology.

“What have we done to democracy?” asks Roy. “What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short- term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?” Roy, of course, doesn’t talk of a return to authoritarianism. She X- rays the symbiotic relationship between democratic governance, the growth of fascism and the free market, and exposes how they all feed off one another.

The ascent of the “fascist BJP” began around the same time as economic liberalisation, the book points out. Today, the Sangh Parivar’s biggest project is “Hinduising” Dalits and Adivasis, and pitting them against each other and against the minorities and Maoists. This has been visible in the way Dalits and Adivasis were unleashed on Muslims in Gujarat, the killings of Christians in Orissa, and in the creation of the anti- Maoist Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh, Roy argues.

http://newageislam.com/why-democracy-isn%E2%80%99t-about-vote-margins/books-and-documents/d/1608

INDIAN MUSLIMS SHOULD REJECT ANTULAY, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

INDIAN MUSLIMS SHOULD REJECT ANTULAY

Muslims must not risk the goodwill they have built by linking Karkare's death with Hindutva terror

By Saif Shahin

24 Dec. 2008

Last week, the Congress leader threw Parliament into a pandemonium by casting doubts about the death of Maharashtra Anti–Terror Squad's chief Hemant Karkare and calling for an inquiry into it. The world rested certain in the conviction that Qasab had gunned down Karkare. The terrorist has apparently even confessed. But Antulay suggested the officer may have paid for his investigation into Hindutva terrorism and for putting several saffron–linked people behind bars in the last couple of months.

In itself, Antulay's non–conformity should not ruffle the feathers of the world's largest democracy. But Antulay's position – of a Muslim MP from Colaba, the Mumbai locality where the terrorists landed and where much of the three–day dance of death took place, and a Union minister for minority affairs to boot – makes his posture on Karkare's death positively diabolical. Antulay is undermining a momentous occasion for Indian Muslims and, by extension, for communal relations in India.

Perhaps for the first time, common Muslims, celebrity Muslims and clerical Muslims have come out together in thousands, tens of thousands, to condemn terrorism and say there is nothing Islamic about it. Even before the Mumbai attack, as many as 6,000 clerics had issued a fatwa in Hyderabad denouncing the massacre of innocents in the name of Islam and had urged Muslims not to be swayed by such satanic ideology. Since Mumbai, Muslims around the country have rallied against terrorism, observed a muted Eid wearing a black band during namaz, shunned the annual December 6 Babri Masjid protests and refused to cremate the terrorists in their burial grounds. Many have blasted Pakistan for spreading terrorism in "our country".

http://newageislam.com/indian-muslims-should-reject-antulay--/war-on-terror/d/1075

Support for Obama highlights the positivity of Muslim attitudes towards the US,

Islam and the West

Support for Obama highlights the positivity of Muslim attitudes towards the US

Muslims, too, Believe in ‘Change’

By Saif Shahin

July 4, 2008

But this support has come at a price. Those sitting in the left wing of the US Commentariat agree that it is, at the very least, a chink in Obama’s armour. And not without reason, for those on their right have picked on Obama’s middle name Hussein, accused him of being a Muslim and even called him “the candidate of terrorists”. One anti-Obama email campaign during the primary season read: “Let us all remain alert concerning Obama’s expected presidential candidacy. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!”

http://newageislam.com/support-for-obama-highlights-the-positivity-of-muslim-attitudes-towards-the-us/islam-and-the-west/d/168