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Monthly Archives: June 2013
“Religion Vs Atheism-A Question For The Majority” By F. Sheikh
I am talking about religion in general and Islam in particular.
I agree with Babar Sahib’s comments that majority of religious people, as compared to atheists, are just followers. The majority of these followers are either non-practicing or they are only culturally associated with the religion. They participate only on major religious occasions. And for vast majority of these the religious analysis we are involved in, is waste of time. The religion is neither central to their life nor it is a hindrance in their progress of modern life. But nevertheless, even this small cultural association with religion is an important part of their whole being. They have spent their growing years learning large part of their morals of life from religion. Although they could have learned morals solely from other sources also, but the reality is they learned mostly from religious culture. They have precious childhood memories of celebrating religious holidays- who could forget the fireworks of shab-e-barat, excitement of Chand Raat and impatiently waiting for the sunrise of Eid day to wear the new clothes, shining shoes, exchange gifts and go for Eid prayer holding father’s hand.
The religion itself may not be central to most of these peoples’ life, but it is an important part of their wholesome being and growing up years and their precious memories are essential ingredients, and not mistaken years.
Mr. Garry Gutting writes in NYT on “Being Catholic”
“I read “self-respect” as respect for what are (to borrow the title of the philosopher Charles Taylor’s great book) the “sources of the self.” These are the sources nurturing the values that define an individual’s life. For me, there are two such sources. One is the Enlightenment, where I’m particularly inspired by Voltaire, Hume and the founders of the American republic. The other is the Catholic Church, in which I was baptized as an infant, raised by Catholic parents, and educated for 8 years of elementary school by Ursuline nuns and for 12 more years by Jesuits. For me to deny either of these sources would be to deny something central to my moral being.”
As I mentioned before, for vast majority of these people, the critical religious analysis is either waste of time or irrelevant, religion is not hindrance in their modern life, religion is not central to their life but growing up years are important part of their life. Considering all this, for this majority conversion to atheism is nothing more than an academic exercise, at a cost of losing part of self being. I am sure my atheist friends has valid individual reasons for conversion, but I am talking about the majority Babar Sahib has referred to.
Using high I.Q. is no guarantee for correct decision. Thinking purely mathematically, for vast majority I have referred to above, it is better to believe in God as mentioned in Mirza Sahib’s posted article” Existence Of God”- Pascal’s wager (if you do not know whether there is a God, it is better to believe or assume that there is a God rather than not).
Fayyaz Sheikh
Existence of God
Shared by Mirza Iqbal Ashraf
EXISTENCE OF GOD: (Article from, Ask Philosophers Website)
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When arguing about the existence of God, the vast majority of arguments I have ever run into always go to the point of asking for evidence. With that word in use they are implying the physical manifestation of evidence to prove God true and, as a theist, that is not how God works in relation to what we are taught. Must evidence, in a physical form or with science backing its existence, be truly necessary to believe in the idea of the supernatural? May 15, 2013
Thank you for this inquiry! The idea that all our beliefs, religious or not, must have sufficient evidence is sometimes called “evidentialism.” It is much debated today: some philosophers think there is no uncontroversial domain of what may or may not count as evidence nor, if we did agree on what counts as evidence, how much evidence one needs in order for a belief to be justified. I am inclined to think that all or most of our beliefs are in fact backed up by some evidence (reasons for thinking our beliefs are true), however modest and elusive. And I also suggest that the belief in God is rarely without some evidence, even if it only amounts to ‘it appears to me that God exists.’ But four things might be noted in reply to your question(s). First, not all evidence for a belief need involve “physical manifestations,” a “physical form,” or the natural and social sciences. Part of the problem with these claims is that we do not have a clear, universal concept of what counts as physical. Second, evidence may include the experiential or what seems manifested in one’s experience. So, I suspect that for many theists, part of their evidence-base is some sense of the presence and reality of God. Appeals to experience in a philosophical argument is sometimes referred to as an appeal to phenomenology, an appeal to what seems evident in our experience. Appeals to phenomenology are sometimes used in ethics (e.g. claims are advanced that good and evil are evident in our experiences of health and harm), philosophy of mind (some philosophers seem to deny the reality of consciousness and awareness; other philosophers reply that such a denial flies against all our waking experience), aesthetics (e.g. appeal to our experience of what seems like beauty and ugliness). There are also a variety of arguments for theism based on religious experience. You may find references to this literature on the free, online Stanford Encyclopedia. Third, a significant number of philosophers reject “evidentialism” whether in a religious or secular context. Some think that what makes a belief justified or warranted is the reliability of the belief being true, even if the “believer” has little idea of the evidence available. Some philosophers have argued for believing in God on non-evidential grounds, such as Pascal’s wager (if you do not know whether there is a God, it is better to believe or assume that there is a God rather than not). In several dynamic, interesting books and papers, Paul Moser (of Loyola University) has argued for the primacy of a volitional account for believing in God. It is “volitional” insofar as Moser argues that to seek God one must be willingly open to recognize the reality of a perfectly good, loving God. Once this openness is in play, Moser believes that a yielding to this God of love will become both apparent and justified (the belief in God through this process is not at all in conflict with one’s intellectual integrity). You can find references to his work by just doing a Google search for: Paul Moser philosopher belief in God. Fourth, I suggest that the term “supernatural” may not be the best to employ in connection with reflection on God. This is partly because the term does not have a consistent usage in English and some associate the “supernatural” with the superstitious. The term “theism” (coined in the 17th century in the first philosophy of religion texts in English) is the more consistent term for the belief that there is an all good, powerful, knowing, necessarily existing, omnipresent God who has created and conserves the cosmos in being. |
‘The Last Bastion’ By Nadeem Paracha
Interesting chronology, by Nadeem Paracha in Dawn, of triumph of extremist elements of Wahhabi and Deobandi over Sufism, Brelvi and nationalist movements in three provinces of Pakistan; Sindh is the last standing Bastion. ( F. Sheikh).
2010 Data Darbar attack
Data Ganj Bukh Lahore. Mr. Bhutto in1974
Some excerpts.
When extremists (calling themselves ‘Punjabi Taliban’) attacked the famous Sufi shrine, Data Darbar, in Lahore in 2010, economist and political analyst, Asad Sayeed, made a rather insightful observation.
He said that had such an attack on the Darbar taken place 20 years ago, thousands of Lahorites would have poured out to protest.
But not anymore. The attack on one of Punjab’s most popular Sufi shrines was simply treated as just another terrorist attack.
Though it is now clear that extremists from within the ‘Wahabi’and Deobandi strands of the faith have been going around blowing up Sufi shrines frequented by the majority (and the more moderate) Barelvi Muslims, the Barelvi leadership has mostly looked elsewhere, putting the blame on the ever-elusive ‘foreign hands.’
Journalist and intellectual Khaled Ahmed once wrote a telling tongue-in-cheek article about the annual gathering of the Dawat-i-Islami in Multan.
The Dawat is the Barelvi equivalent of the Deobandi Tableeghi Jamat. Both outfits are considered to be non-political organisations that are more interested in evangelising their respective versions of Islam and its rituals.
One should also mention that both these strains of Islam accuse each another of being ‘flawed Muslims.’
Ahmed wrote(2) how after Dawat’s huge congregation in Multan, when police found some bullet-riddled bodies of Dawat members, the outfit’s main leadership simply refused to acknowledge the glaring evidence that pointed towards the involvement of an opposing Sunni sect’s organisation in the murders.
Ahmed adds that Dawat leaders began babbling about ‘outside forces (RAW, CIA, Mossad)’ who wanted to create disharmony between Pakistan’s Barelvi majority and the Deobandi and Wahabi sects.
One can understand the above-mentioned episode as an example of the confusion Barelvi spiritual leadership has gone through since the 1980s.
From its inception in the 19th century(3) and until about the mid-1980s, the Barelvi sect was largely apolitical in orientation, non-Jihadist and followers of some of the most relaxed dictates of the Hanafi madhab.
‘Barelvi Islam’ (as it is sometimes called) is purely a South Asian phenomenon(4) that fuses elements of South Asian Sufism with the folk and populist strains of various cultures that exist in the area.
It is also called the ‘folk Islam’ of the region in which a high degree of tolerance exists between various faiths, sects, classes and ethnicities and in which the puritanical aspects of other Islamic sects are eschewed and even rejected.
The Sufi shrine and an intense reverence of the Prophet play a central role in Barelvi Islam. Its populist and moderate make-up helped it become the majority Sunni sect amongst the Muslims of South Asia.
Two of its leading opponents have been the Sunni Deobandi sect (also a product of South Asia) and the Puritanical Saudi-inspired ‘Wahabism.’
Both have accused Barelvis of ‘adopting non-Muslim rituals and practices’ and assorted ‘heresies.’
In spite of being the majority sect amongst Sunni Muslims in Pakistan, ‘Barelvi Islam’ hardly ever had a coherent political expression in shape of a mass-based political party or organisation.
Its spiritual leadership largely remained pro-Jinnah (unlike most Deobandi organisations of undivided India), and various Pakistani political leaders have continued to appeal to the symbolism and lingo associated with various populist aspects of Barelvi-ism.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was the most successful in this respect. Click for full article.
http://beta.dawn.com/news/1016461/cafe-black-the-last-bastion/?commentPage=1&storyPage=1