WASHINGTON DIARY: Power of myth, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

WASHINGTON DIARY: Power of myth

By Dr Manzur Ejaz

August 27, 2008

Of course, in the ultimate analysis, intervening on the behalf of the haves or the have-nots is a political act: the question is on whose behalf. Pakistan’s judiciary has been used as an effective tool by the ruling classes. The rich and powerful could get away with any kind of crime. Chaudhry was the first to subvert this mode and became pro-active in delivering justice to the have-nots. This is why his defiance of Musharraf gained significance of historical proportions, elevating him to the level of ‘myth’.

The PMLN quickly grasped the significance of this myth and employed it to win an election despite its disarrayed organisational structure. Somehow, Nawaz Sharif, and to some extent the late Benazir Bhutto, realised that one can fight a person but not a myth. Therefore, despite immense pressure, Bhutto went to Chaudhry’s besieged home and declared him the genuine Chief Justice of Pakistan.

http://newageislam.com/washington-diary--power-of-myth-/current-affairs/d/636

Lecture 3: The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer, Books and Documents, NewAgeISlam.com

Books and Documents

Lecture 3: The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer

‘We have a world of point-events with their primary interval-relations. Out of these an unlimited number of more complicated relations and qualities can be built up mathematically, describing various features of the state of the world. These exist in nature in the same sense as an unlimited number of walks exist on an open moor. But the existence is, as it were, latent unless some one gives a significance to the walk by following it; and in the same way the existence of any one of these qualities of the world only acquires significance above its fellows if a mind singles it out for recognition. Mind filters out matter from the meaningless jumble of qualities, as the prism filters out the colours of the rainbow from the chaotic pulsations of white light. Mind exalts the permanent and ignores the transitory; and it appears from the mathematical study of relations that the only way in which mind can achieve her object is by picking out one particular quality as the permanent substance of the perceptual world, partitioning a perceptual time and space for it to be permanent in, and, as a necessary consequence of this Hobson’s choice, the laws of gravitation and mechanics and geometry have to be obeyed. Is it too much to say that the mind’s search for permanence has created the world of physics?’9

http://newageislam.com/lecture-3--the-conception-of-god-and-the-meaning-of-prayer-/books-and-documents/d/218