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How to attain Nirvana in your lifetime? Cyber hecklers for sure are putting a roadblock so that we don�t attain one! By A.H. Jaffor Ullah This short article is about
how one could free him or her from the bondage of a blind belief system to
which we are indoctrinated to in our formative years. To this end,
many enlightened readers have taken the onus on them to unearth truth and
point out gross inanities embedded in Holy Scriptures. I congratulate
them for their monumental success. Also much kudos to the scientists,
engineers, and software developers who made this Internet a great new
information highway. Despite all these positive development, we have
amongst us some obscurantists who are trying to through the proverbial
monkey wrench to spoil the journey we happily undertook in 1997-98 when the
Internet just got started. Readers of e-forums must
have seen a handful of hecklers who are trying their best to create
confusion and disturb the serenity of cyber forums with their nagging
complain. When these folks have nothing better to do in life, they
pick on writers, essayists, commentators, etc., by hurling epithets such as
�Bongo-Chelabi,� �Bhandari,� and whatnot. Lately, a newcomer
to this mudslinging came a new participant who just proposed to form a
government of Bangladesh in exile. Some humor � one might say!
The other nagger from United Arab Emirate who wants to straddle on both
liberal and illiberal camps also have quoted the �position� that was
bestowed on me by an unknown participant who call himself �Truth Is
Might� and who mailed the article all the way from Auckland, New Zealand.
If these are done in bantering mode, then it is all right. But I
hardly doubt the motive could be anything but banter (good-humored and
playful conversation). The hecklers are out there
because they have no valid arguments to refute the economic data provided by
Mr. Quddus Khan of Vinnomot to show that Muslim countries in the world are
lagging behind economically to such nation as Israel. I do not have
the audacity to compare the moribund (dying) economy of Muslim nations with
that of developed Western nations. It is conceivable that the way
things are moving for India and China, in just 50 years time Bangladesh and
Pakistan may still remain as LDC whereas the other two nations may well be
approaching the status of either developed nations or on their way to become
one. Through my writings, I have
depicted various inanities in our motherland. I have also coined the
phrase �Bangladesh �ber Alles� at least two years ago to show the
mindset of most Bangladeshi folks who think that there is nothing wrong in
our motherland vis-�-vis modernity. However, lately, I am being
criticized for my straight talks. I have been writing on the issue of
how Islamization of Bangladesh for over three decades have taken the nation
to an abysmal pit and there is no sign that the nation is about to make a
U-turn from the retrogressive journey. But my opponents are not
countering my arguments; instead, they started a negative campaign to
undermine whatever scholarship I do have. The main protagonist in this
vilification campaign is one who writes under an assumed female name (in
fact most detractors of secularist writers pen under assumed name) acts like
a typical termagant. Hurling epithets to anyone who criticizes Islam
for not promoting progress in this world is this person�s pastime. I
have repeatedly mentioned that the e-forums that we have are not scholarly
forums. Therefore, we should never pretend that each and every one of
us is �expert� in any given field. We simply express our opinion
on matters that concern us. For this reason after 9-11 terrorist
attacks, we have become very vocal on global terrorism perpetrated by the
followers of Osama bin Laden. Many of us by now have studied the
tenets of Wahhbism to understand the Jihadi mindset of many Muslim
terrorists. But our cyber hecklers are crying foul saying that we have
this tendency to blame Islam, which they opined as the religion of peace.
Many secularists have reluctantly taken the onus on them to prove that Islam
is anything but a religion of peace. Mr. Abul Kasem, Mr. S.K. Mirza,
Mr. Fatemolla, Mr. Ashgar, and a few more Bangalee writers have done their
probing on violence perpetrated on womenfolk in the advent of Islam under
prophet Muhammad�s diktat especially on Jewish people. These authors
have shown conclusively that Muhammad�s army did gratuitous killing on
Bani Qureiza people. Many of the same Bangalee writers have profusely
penned their essays on Jihad in the aftermath of 9-11 terror attacks.
Still then the obscurantist hecklers are saying, �Oh no, you can�t
possibly translate Arabic phrase into English.� You see these folks
are trying to tell us that Arabic phrases in Qur�an should be left alone.
The other absurd thing they are saying that mortal human will never be able
to decipher Allah�s word spoken to Muhammad. In truth, these cyber
hecklers are admitting that there are many incongruities in Qur�anic
dictums. This cunning bunch is trying to hush this up.
Therefore, they say, �Don�t you try translating Qur�anic phrases
because the meaning may have changed in the last 1400 years.� To these hecklers may I say
that please mind your own business. If you cannot defend the inanities
in many Qur�anic phrases, then give up and embrace the views propounded by
the secularist writers of Bangladesh origin. In English, there is this
phrase � if you can�t beat them, join them. There is no harm
joining the secularist writers who are using a rational approach to show the
incongruities that abound in religious scriptures no matter be it from
Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism. Humankind has come a long way since
the days of Buddha, Christ, and Muhammad. Science has sought answers
to unearth many mysteries of physical world. The laws of conservation
of mass and thermodynamic principles have been elucidated to show that some
physical laws and principles bind us earthlings. In nineteenth
century, a Cambridge don by the name Charles Darwin came up with the idea
that species evolve due to evolution and not due to whim of almighty.
A Christian monk in Austria by the name Gregor Mendel again in mid
nineteenth century while playing with pea plants as a hobby showed how
traits are genetically controlled. He gave us the concept of gene.
A century later, a Briton named Francis Crick and a Mid-Westerner by the
name James Watson showed us the three-dimensional structure of the primary
constituent of gene, which is DNA. Within the next 30 years, a new
field of Genetic Engineering was established. Because of the growth in
this field now human insulin is produced in bacterial cells. Oh, yes,
none of what I have mentioned can be found in Old Testament, Bhagabat Geeta,
Qur�an, or in any Holy Scriptures. Similarly, no mention of
electron, proton, neutron, positron, or any sub-atomic particles are
mentioned in any Holy Scriptures either. It is a foregone conclusion
of modern science that we human beings are here because of the right
chemistry that promotes life on earth. Simply put, had there been no
oxygen in earth�s atmosphere, there would be any life.
Revolutionary ideas regarding our existence on earth are being explained by
such new idea as Anthropic Principle. Our cyber hecklers won�t
make them acquainted with these revolutionary ideas lest they lose their
�Iman� or faith. They are here to create impediment to human
progress. At every opportunity, they shout: �Oh, what do you know
about God�s wisdom. He has a grand scheme of which you know
nothing.� To my secularist and liberated friends I say, continue your work. A time will come in the future when all the obscurantist of the world will realize one day that they were blind all these years. It is rather a difficult thing to rid one�s prejudices and blind faith. It takes a lot of reading and courage to become an apostate. Very few Bangalees will attain this Nirvana. ------------------ A.H.
Jaffor Ullah writes from New Orleans. His e-mail address is - [email protected]
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