Archive of entries posted by admin

Bourdieustic Thoughts: On Authorized Language and Uniform Rituals

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Language and Symbolic Power

As a member of University, now I am participating in a ritual which empowers the academic hierarchy and justifies the existence of the institution. In order to get some share from its symbolic power stock market, I am obligated to write a paper that should demonstrate the habitus of social scientists: impose on myself to evaluate the evaluation of a respected member of other respected members of the club. I am expected not to use slang. I am expected to cite a long list of accepted intellectual works. I am expected to create a theory of my own, and occasionally manufacture new jargons as trade mark of my production. I know that I am not expected to divert from formal guidelines. I know that it is only tolerated to a certain extend when your name has gained certain authority in the hierarchy. Well, I tried my best to fit the mold. But, I continuously struggled in a dilemma created by my rebellious and mischievous thoughts. Here is my intellectual “cookie” prepared in a sleepless night that was occasionally interrupted by my newborn son’s ritualistic cry.

Happiness And Virtue as a Mean

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Thus, the ancient conception of happiness is “a socially justified state of contentment” while the modern conception of happiness is “personally justified state of contentment.” According to Webster, a burglar celebrating his success in a bar with his friends is happy; but according to Aristotle that burglar cannot be happy, since happiness is relevant for rational beings, and a rational being cannot be happy with burglary. A celebrating burglar is a grazing animal.

A New Koran?

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And it is POLITICALLY NEO-CONNING, since it serves the policy of Neocon-led coalition of warmongers. I do not know whether Massoud is a hired petty officer for this agenda or just a naive person, but, it is clear that his project will only irritate and provoke Muslims who are frustrated and traumatized under cruel military invasions and occupations (such as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Chechnya), or suffering under USA-supported oppressive regimes (such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan). When a few angry and pathetic Muslims engage in some stupid and violent action, the Western media will salivate and rush to focus their cameras on the ugly faces of “barbarians”, while the American capitalists will continue their racket by transferring billions and billions of our tax money to the accounts of war industry and its sub contractors.

IN SUMMARY, I am astounded that FP is taking this ridiculous idea seriously. If we are going to take any idea published on the web seriously, then we will be volunteering for an alien abduction adventure. I feel like I am talking in a symposium organized by the flat-earth society. Sir, do you also discuss cubic meteorites with avocados in their center?

The Fictional Muhammad?

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So, if these gentlemen have the right to depict Muhammad to be an evil guy and his supporters being as evil or duped, then I should also have the right to expose their so-called scholarly work, which is merely based on hearsay books and distortion and contortion of the Quranic verses by the followers of those hearsay stories. For instance, brother Spencer generously uses the hearsay stories fabricated centuries after Muhammad’s life to assassinate Muhammad’s character, while he knows well that according to the same sources which he trusts, Muhammad reportedly split the Moon causing half of it to fall in Ali’s backyard, or Muhammad reportedly made trees walk, Muhammad ascended to the seventh heaven with his body, and many other stories. Scholarly integrity requires consistency and honesty in using sources in evaluating a historic personality. But, your gentlemen pick and choose from those books as they wish. They take advantage of the crazy noises created by Jingoists, Crusaders and Jihadists, and hideously try to justify a bloody imperial Crusade with its resurrected Spanish Inquisition mentality against Muslims. I consider the work of these gentlemen a dishonest or ignorant attack against one of the most progressive and peaceful leaders in human history.

Freedom of thought, it’s your God-given right

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I believe that the spirit of ijtihad should not simply be brought back. It should be democratized and popularized beyond the academics and imams. Some scholars will object, insisting that to exercise ijtihad one must have skills developed by years of training. Otherwise, they say, we wind up with anybody quoting the Qur’an to justify radical behavior, as is already happening with the rise of the internet and the decline of traditional authority.

Understanding Spending In God’s Way: (Zakat Or Sadaqa) In The Quranic Light*

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Spending in God’s way should be understood in a much broader sense than the generally understood zakat system. It involves considerable spending on the part of a modern state for a variety of functions financed through a well-devised taxation system, besides charitable spending at the individual level. The best kind of spending in God’s way is helping others stand on their own feet. To help another person in a way, which makes him or her look for help all the time, is inherently ill motivated, and is like that of those who like to be seen by men, and is of no intrinsic virtue to them (2:264). From this point of view, the modern state should take appropriate measures to promote investment and development to increase opportunities for gainful employment of unemployed people, along with crafting a well-devised social welfare and security system. At the individual level, such efforts should include savings, investment and work that would help build infrastructure and industries for employment-generating development, along with their humanitarian spending in deserving cases.

Was Ayesha A Six-Year-Old Bride?

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So, I believed, without solid evidence other than my reverence to my Prophet, that the stories of the marriage of seven-year-old Ayesha to 50-year-old Prophet are only myths. However, my long pursuit in search of the truth on this matter proved my intuition correct. My Prophet was a gentleman. And he did not marry an innocent seven or nine year old girl. The age of Ayesha has been erroneously reported in the hadith literature. Furthermore, I think that the narratives reporting this event are highly unreliable. Some of the hadith (traditions of the Prophet) regarding Ayesha’s age at the time of her wedding with prophet are problematic. I present the following evidences against the acceptance of the fictitious story by Hisham ibn ‘Urwah and to clear the name of my Prophet as an irresponsible old man preying on an innocent little girl.

Alcohol Makes You Smarter OR Another Bogus “Study” to Serve Alcohol Industry

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The benefit of the wine comes from the grape juice, not the alcohol. A recent Yale study demonstrated a correlation flaw in the so-called studies showing the benefit of wine against heart diseases. Besides, the beer and wine industry spends billions of dollars annually to promote their products, and part of the promotion is sponsoring “scientists” to come up with good news about their products. I have heard the same story of benefits of wine, for years after years cooked and presented by the media as “fresh” news.

Reading Some Meccan Suras

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Great inequality of wealth along with fraud and greed are common problems today. The modern world for all its material development has not been able to overcome the moral failures of Mecca. All over the world great wealth and hunger exist side by side. Greed, fraud, lack of charity, wealth centered life, these money related sins are as prevalent today as they were 1400 years ago in Arabia. As such, somewhat sadly the description of pagan Mecca is recognizable all over the world today.

Muslim Reformists’ Conference at Oxford University

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A noted Turkish scholar Edip Yuksel who now lives in USA and Arnold Yasin Mol of Netherland and Taj Hargey of MECO were main organizers. Besides Islamic scholars there were some activists and students from Oxford who also participated. It was quite encouraging that so many Islamic scholars from various countries who want reform and change within Islamic frame-work came together to discuss various issues pertaining to Islamic societies and contemporary challenges.

Sign the Petition to add Critical Thinking Classes in K-12

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It is a travesty that our educational system is filling the minds of youngsters with plenty of data without training them how to process them properly. Individuals and societies suffer greatly from logical fallacies that invite harmful choices, superstitions, bigotry, extremism, and manipulative propaganda. Critical reasoning skills empower individuals and societies to make better decisions in their financial, political, social and personal choices.

“How can we Observe the Sala Prayers by Following the Quran Alone?”

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“How can we observe the Sala prayers by following the Quran alone?” is a favorite question among Sunni and Shiite Muslims who follow derivative texts, religious instruction, teachings and laws, all of which are written by men. With this question, both sects try to justify the necessity and proliferation of contradictory sectarian teachings, medieval Arab culture, oppressive laws filled with prohibitions and regulations–all falsely attributed to God and His prophet.

Why the Zionist Enemies of the Prophet Muhammad LOVE HADITH even More than Sunnis and Shiites?

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These enemies of Islam who have been promoting wars, torture and genocide against Muslims around the world for more than a decade, are all in love with hadith. When I debated with them, they all insisted on hadiths, which were fabricated centuries after Muhammed. Over and over, they repeated the need for hadith to understand the Quran. They hoped to lure me to the piles of trash and mud of Hadithistan so that they could drown me there together with the Muhammed of their imagination created by those lies. They all accused me of not following hadith, ironically employing exactly the same silly and false arguments used by Sunnis and Shiis. They even used the distorted translations of the Quran to force-feed me hadith, which were developed by those who traded the liberating and progressive message of the Quran with the enslaving and backward teachings of hadiths and sunna.

“Who influenced the uprising of Quranist movement?”

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Rashad’s impact on modern Quranic movement is underestimated. Many of those who viciously attack him are unaware of the fact that many of the ideas and arguments used to defend the Quran alone and refutations of hadiths, originated from Rashad’s dedicated study of the Quran as a sincere seeker of truth. I am surprised that some Turkish people do not even know Rashad’s name, but they have received the message from a friend of mine who received it from me. We should not focus on Rashad or exaggerate him like some among Submitters do, but we should also beware of tendency of unfairly and unknowingly attacking and insulting a courageous monotheist.

Innumerate, Ignorant and Arrogant Sunni and Shiite Scholars

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Muslims started developing theories regarding the number of the letters of Bismillah after the revelation of “one of the greatest” (74:35) miracles in 1974. Interestingly, after realizing the radical theological ramification of Code 19, contemporary Sunni and Shiite scholars started disagreeing on the number of letters contained in Bismillah. To deny the existence of the Code, every possible argument, regardless how ridiculous, is tried. Some clergymen increased the number of its letters to 20, 21 and even upto 22. Some preferred to reduce the letter count to 18. We will discuss this preposterous but common reaction to the mathematical structure of the Quran later.

Islamic Theory of Evolution

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Will Durant, an American historian, reminds his readers that medical books authored by Ali Ibni Sina (980-1037) and Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (844-926) were both used as textbooks in European universities for centuries, and that in 1395 Razi’s book Kitab al-Hawi was among the nine textbooks used by the University of Paris. The same book informs the reader that Avicenna’s Qanun fil Tibb, a science encyclopedia, was a main textbook at Montpelier and Louvain universities until the mid-17th century. We should mention two important Muslim scientists who had immense impact on scientific enterprise in Europe: Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, known in the West as Abubacer (1107-1185) and philosopher Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd who became famous in the West by the name Averroes (1126-1298).