Sultan Shahin: A Life Positive Magazine Profile: The universe is a manifestation of the one universal consciousness, Spiritual Meditations

Spiritual Meditations

Sultan Shahin: A Life Positive Magazine Profile: The universe is a manifestation of the one universal consciousness

Transformation

Sultan Shahin, a journalist, spoke to Praveen Chopra

Is this man for real, you wonder. He has the temerity to write that Muslims in India should have no qualms in claiming their Vedic heritage. Or that Muslims' prayers remain unheeded because they have forgotten how to pray effectively, to meditate that is. He calls the Babri mosque demolition an opportunity for Muslims to learn some lessons and to feel grateful to God for making it possible.

They can, for example, exert their right to forgive and thus set both parties to the dispute free of the karmic debt. This is provocative stuff. But Sultan Shahin, son of a maulvi (Muslim priest) and married to a Hindu, is an unusual man. His journey of transformation has been atypical too. He was attending a barbecue party in England about eight years ago where one face-reader told Sultan that his birthday must be on October 26. For Sultan, this was too close to reality (October 27) for comfort.

Starting with astrology, Sultan went on to delve into spirituality. One of the things he tried was the Hasidic Jewish prayer about forgiving all people who might have hurt one physically, psychologically or financially in the past. For him, this brought back memories: the experience of hurt and living through the accompanying pain again. It wasn't just a load off his shoulders metaphorically; the pain he used to suffer in his shoulders and back disappeared, too. This demonstrated for him the relationship between experience and the body, which is a store-house of experiences. Growing in knowledge, he becomes aware that all that is is energy. Sultan believes that the less conscious we are of the density of things, the freer we are of illusion.

In retrospect, Sultan says, he had faintly realised such truths even as a teenager. Born in a village in Bihar, he used to take the cattle out for grazing which gave him ample time to reflect. The thinker in him made him argue with his father: "Why do you want me to pray to a God I don't understand?" He stopped doing namaaz (prayers) but promised his father that he would study all religions, particularly Islam, and choose the one that most convinced him.

http://newageislam.com/sultan-shahin--a-life-positive-magazine-profile--the-universe-is-a-manifestation-of-the-one-universal-consciousness/spiritual-meditations/d/2731

Pakistan’s forgotten ghetto residents: the Biharis of Bangladesh, Islam and Human Rights, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Human Rights

Pakistan’s forgotten ghetto residents: the Biharis of Bangladesh

Camp conditions are miserable, and large groups of families are often forced to share their living area with animals. They have no rights, limited job options and few economic prospects. They are refugees. Although they did not desert their country; their country appears to have forgotten them.

In pre-independence India, they were a Muslim minority in the region of Bihar. At the time of the partition in 1947, many moved to what was then East Pakistan. When civil war broke out between East and West Pakistan, the Biharis sided with the West. Subsequently in 1971, East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh, and these Biharis who had been loyal to Pakistan were denied citizenship because they were deemed as collaborators and had "supported the enemy".

Their first choice was to leave the new nation and go to the west, the part of Pakistan that still existed. They expected to be welcomed, and they waited. Almost four decades later, they continue to wait in silence and despair. & nbsp; Pakistan initially denied them permission to emigrate, fearing a massive influx could destabilize the country. The legal limbo they find themselves in predicts and even more despondent future.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan%E2%80%99s-forgotten-ghetto-residents--the-biharis-of-bangladesh/islam-and-human-rights/d/892