Finally, a Lady with Balls!

As we are 'recovering' from the recent Philip Green vs. Maldivian culture clash, the nation is gripped with yet another controversy, once again religious in nature. This time the issue in focus is an article published in Minivan Daily written by MDP deputy secretary general Aishath Aaniya titled "Are women a social plague?". Some of the issues she wrote about deals with blind faith, excessive modesty obligations, gender inequalities, unwillingness to apply logic and even misinterpretation of holy scriptures and prophetic narrations. While I greatly admire Aaniya for her braveness in the face of our country's recently found religious conservatism, I was foolishly hoping that most people would at least give some thought to what she had said in the article.

After reading the comments posted under the article, I realized that I was wrong. Only a hand full of liberal minded personages praised her for her words of wisdom and act of bravery (for publishing something so bold), contrasted by the rest of the posts which were basically rants from amateur mullahs condemning her to the pits of Hell, calling her a blasphemer and finally passing judgment over her submission to God (To quote one of the comments "I doubt if at this point, you can be called a proper Muslim"). Its amusing the way these people think they are at liberty to criticize a sacred relationship between God and man by dubbing someone a heretic over an idea he merely expressed with good intentions.

However there was one particular post from an apparent doomsayer, which I found very provocative. It relates to Muhammad's narration of encountering tortured feminine souls on his visit to Hell, which took place on the night of the ascension. He described one particular woman hung from her hair with a boiling brain (due to the hellish heat) because she had refused to wear a veil during her life-time, along with various other grisly inexplicable methods of torture (which, ironically, you can only find in religion) for transgressions with varying degrees of gravity. If a mortal does anything like this, he would be called a "vengeful psychotic sadist with an insatiable taste for the macabre" (subsequent to being burned at the stake, once again, ironically) but since this narration supposedly comes from the prophet, we are led to believe it without contemplating its validity or logic or anything for that matter. Anyone who refuses to accept this or with the intellectual capacity to refute it is hastily called a blasphemer or worse. (For this reason I shall keep quiet on the commonly accepted nature of the divine). Blind faith prevails everywhere. My honest impression is that even some negative comments on that article seem to support Aaniya's cause for writing it.

Ultimately its not going to matter what we (meaning self-proclaimed liberals) think of this woman or her bold piece of writing in which she presents her arguments well, with seemingly flawless logic, fair reasoning and reverence of Islamic principles even though she was negating some of them. Most people who called her a blasphemer ignored these qualities of her writing and focused on superimposing their misguided religious dogmas acquired over years of ignorance. She is undoubtedly going to face repercussions, and if she is too proud to recant her arguments and publish an apology, she will almost surely get sacked regardless of what MDP thinks. The party would feel compelled to do so in an attempt to sanitize the organization and to maintain public trust. (One more reason to hate politics? I think so). Even if she does apologize in the course of the next few days I really can't help myself but to admire her for this single act of courage. After all, she has balls (in the metaphorical sense) that most of us can only dream of having.

Gift or curse? You decide

Since I am somewhat of an early bird I tend to watch a little TV before I begin my day and this morning I had just parked myself in front of the tube with a glass of warm milk when I landed on the local propaganda machine (actually the only machine with the license to pollute our airwaves). The airing program was showing nature videos and the narration goes "The Earth with its vastness was created for only us, Humans. Its constituent rivers, ponds and oceans were created to quench our thirst. The firmness of the ground is just for us to trod on...". The program had the conspicuous undertones of TVM's famed religious documentaries so I decided to linger on for a while to catch the Koranic or Prophetic quote justifying this stupendous claim. Guess what? There were none! I am guessing that someone just woke up and realized all that for the benefit of us all.

Humans undoubtedly have the most power as it is well within their limits to either destroy their planet or to restore it to its former paradisaical glory. Our actions does have a higher impact than any other creature's but this doesn't mean we are the most important. It seems the higher a species is on the food chain, the less important it is for the survival of that chain. Scientists agree that we have virtually left the food chain and would not create a missing link if we are to go extinct for any reason. In other words, we are expendable in nature. Remove all humans (yes, all 6.5 billion of them) from the face of the Earth today and its biosphere will continue thriving with diversity and abundance. On the other hand, remove all the insects or the trees and life itself will come to a screeching halt. They deserve to gloat, if only they were capable of doing so.

I am disappointed to know that despite having all that power ot make a difference, the only thing we seem to do (without hindrance) is parade around thinking about our extremely confined self-centric universe, completely oblivious to our minisculity in a grand cosmic scale. As if it is not enough that we plunder the Earth and wipe out whole species in the process. There is genuine concern for our planet though (Kyoto protocol? Nope, thats just a joke by the industrialized nations) and I feel obliged to thank them all for their efforts.

Oh, and I just realized this. If we are God's gift to anything (the belief at least in the part of the word that I reside in) it would definately have to be arrogance and ignorance.

“The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

- Ted Perry (attributed to Chief Seattle c. 1786)

Evil Manifest

I was quite young when I was first introduced to the Islamic concept of the Antichrist (Arabic الدّجّال for the Deceiver/Impostor) and until last night I knew relatively nothing about him except that I was to flee when and if I ever caught sight of him. In order to know more I watched a video of a speech given by Canadian Islamic scholar Dr. Bilal Philips on the subject of the Antichrist.

Philips began his speech first by comparing the different versions of the Antichrist. He found the reference in the Christian scrolls to be to be vague and obscure. He continued to dig deeper into history by examining the Jewish scrolls (namely the Book of Daniel) and ridiculed the description found therein. Finally, he moved on to the Islamic concept after an initial bout of praise for the complexity in the narrations by the Prophet’s companions.

According to Philips, the Antichrist is a sun-tanned Caucasian male, with a muscular physique, stooped back, curly hair, green eyes (of which one is blind), protruding forehead and a most prominent feature, the Arabic letters ف , ك and ر which would be deciphered by all devout Moslems, regardless of their literacy, as the mark of the Disbeliever.

Then Philips began describing his earthly manifestation prior to the Day of Resurrection. Three years before the Antichrist is set to appear, God shall command the skies to withhold a third of its rain and the Earth a third of its produce. The second year two-thirds and everything on the third year. Then only would the Antichrist appear before man, bearing powers only a god could possess. He shall carry mountains of bread and meat, along with rivers from both Heaven and Hell, he shall be able to raise the dead, cure the sick and fling those who oppose him into the pits of Hell for all to see. (These contesters enter the real Heaven as Martyrs). Most important of all, he shall claim to be God. This ultimate trial of faith will save the faithful who reject him and bring out the infidels and the hypocrites who align with him. The latter will suffer eternal damnation.

I listened intently but all the while I was disturbed by an irritable conflict with the circumstances with which the Antichrist appears. Philips mentioned that he will be preceded by the Mahdi who will wage a global war against the infidels (a sort of crusade). Based on the narrations, I assume that after this war humanity’s stance on Earth would already be weakened. Then comes the drought and the famine brought about by Divine Intervention. We can all imagine what kind of a scenario this would create… think poverty struck regions of Africa, only a million times worse than that if agriculture is eradicated altogether. After taking this into consideration, how could any man (or woman for that matter) refuse the salvation offered by the Antichrist? How could anyone who is on the fringe of death refuse a morsel of food, even if it comes from this unholy impersonator, aided in his deception of mankind by God Himself? If a man were to be responsible for such acts of deception, would he not be deemed unfathomably cruel? Nobel winning physicist Steven Weinberg once said in an interview by a BBC documentary “The Atheism Tapes” by Jonathan Miller:

“Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's [a God] who obsessed the degree to which people worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him”

Sadly, I must agree with Weinberg. His observations are accurate albeit exaggerated. However, I REFUSE to believe that those traits are inherent to God’s true nature. They are in stark contrast to the Divine Characters that I do believe in... that God is The Most Beneficent, The Peace and Blessing, The Merciful, The Ever Providing, The Loving and The Truth and The Compassionate. After a lot of contemplation I reached only one conclusion. We have distorted our collective perception of God to further our own trifle agendas.

May God forgive us all for the atrocities we have committed and continue to commit in His Name.