Please credit Americans with some intelligence, Mr. Kanchan Gupta!, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Please credit Americans with some intelligence, Mr. Kanchan Gupta!

Nourishing terror with US dollars by Kanchan Gupta

As for non-military aid, it is obvious that generous cash transfers from Western capitals to Islamabad have not helped prevent Pakistani society’s descent into Islamic fanaticism and jihadi bloodletting. Gen Musharraf had promised to reform the education system by cleansing school curriculum of the regressive elements introduced during the Islamisation drive of Gen Zia-ul-Haq, shutting down non-registered madrasas run by rabid mullahs, and modernising those seminaries which are recognised by the Government. For all his talk about “enlightened moderation”, Gen Musharraf did nothing on this front; by the time he ordered his troops to storm Lal Masjid and its two madrasas, including Jamia Hafza, in the heart of Islamabad on July 8, 2007, thousands of clones of this Deoband-inspired seminary of hate had sprung up across Pakistan. Many more have mushroomed in the last two years and each one of them preaches a simple, one-sentence message: “Jihad is your salvation.”

Distinguished Pakistani scholar and columnist Pervez Hoodbhoy, in an article, “The Saudi-isation of Pakistan”, published in the latest issue of Newsline, laments how radical Islamism and mullah-driven Arabisation are furiously gnawing at the innards of a tottering Pakistani state. He says although the Government admits to the existence of only 13,000 madrasas with 1.5 million Taliban, the real number is likely between 18,000 and 22,000. That would mean millions of Taliban being indoctrinated by hate-mongers for whom Islam means being in a state of constant war with those who refuse to submit to oppressive Islamism that militates against human liberty, equality and dignity.

http://newageislam.com/please-credit-americans-with-some-intelligence,-mr.-kanchan-gupta!--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1129

Lecture 2: The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

Lecture 2: The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience

Scholastic philosophy has put forward three arguments for the existence of God. These arguments, known as the Cosmological, the Teleological, and the Ontological, embody a real movement of thought in its quest after the Absolute. But regarded as logical proofs, I am afraid, they are open to serious criticism and further betray a rather superficial interpretation of experience.

The cosmological argument views the world as a finite effect, and passing through a series of dependent sequences, related as causes and effects, stops at an uncaused first cause, because of the unthinkability of an infinite regress. It is, however, obvious that a finite effect can give only a finite cause, or at most an infinite series of such causes. To finish the series at a certain point, and to elevate one member of the series to the dignity of an uncaused first cause, is to set at naught the very law of causation on which the whole argument proceeds. Further, the first cause reached by the argument necessarily excludes its effect. And this means that the effect, constituting a limit to its own cause, reduces it to something finite.

http://newageislam.com/lecture-2--the-philosophical-test-of-the-revelations-of-religious-experience/books-and-documents/d/219