FarQuest

Take Back The Tech: Tale of two stalker mullahs

Disclaimer: This note by NO means aims to bring a bad name to the bearded individuals or religious clerics in general and the purpose is solely to share a story of two nasty mullahs.Also both these stories come from my dear and near ones who have been so close to me that there is no room for questioning the veracity of information provided.

Tale 1:
She was in her early teens and was waiting outside her bungalow for someone to open the gate as she had just got back from school. It was then that she heard a sound as if someone’s calling her and as she turned, she saw a flying kiss coming her way from a Mullah going on a bicycle. From the looks of him, he seemed to be one of so called “Maulvi Sahibs” who provide home based teaching of Quran to kids and are often seen going from one home to another on their bicycles. While it’s a SHAME for a person engaged in such a noble profession to be doing such acts of disgust,the next story makes one feel even more shocked!

Tale 2:
She had just started learning to read Quran and was barely 8 years old or so. Her Maulvi Sahib whom she used to respect a lot was also a young guy in his late teens or early twenties. Days went by and she kept getting her lessons regularly,however, one day, while she was revising her lesson infront of the maulvi sahib, she felt the maulvi sahib is staring her instead of looking on the Quran-e-Pak. As she raised her head to look at the Maulvi Sahib sitting right beside her,she found him smiling at her.She felt a bit uncomfortable and confused but what came ahead left her dumbfounded. Maulvi Sahib said to her with a smile “Kya aap k dil main meray liye mohabbat hai?” - “Do you feel love for me?” The 8 year old who was probably not even aware of the terms “romantic love” didn’t know how to answer but she sensed something is wrong so just to get herself out of the situation, she said “I will call you bhai (brother) from tomorrow”. Her answer changed the expressions on Mullah’s face but thankfully brought an end to the torturous lecture session.Right after the lecture, the 8 year old ran to the washroom and cried her heart out, she wanted to let everyone know what maulvi sahib had said to her but she felt embarrassment, she felt fear, she just didn’t know how to say it out. She wiped her tears and decided to remain quiet.
Next day came, the maulvi sahib came right on time and 8 yr old went to take her daily lesson but this time unwantedly. She wanted to quickly recite till the given Ayat, get over with the lesson and run but just when the lesson ended, maulvi sahib told her again with the same wicked smile “You did not call me *bhai* today?” and poor 8 year old again found herself trapped in the same situation that she had barely got herself out of a day ago. Today, she does not even remember what she told maulvi this time, may be something like “I’ll call you bhai now” or something, she does not remember exactly but all she remembers is feeling extremely uncomfortable, scared. After the maulvi sahib went, she again ran to the washroom and cried a lot, she was feeling shame.Note that victims of child abuse/female harassment often feel shame even though it not their fault to be a victim but somehow in the absence of proper guidance, the psychological changes triggers a sense of embarrassment in them and this 8 year old little girl was no different. After trying to figure out how to solve this problem, she finally decided to talk to her mother about it. So, she ran to her mother, and told her the entire story while bursting into tears. Her mother comforted her and asked her not to feel either bad or worried about it. She told her that she won’t have to get any lessons from the Maulvi Sahib now and the very next day she fired the mullah from his job.

While the 8 year old was wise enough to get her mother intervene and come out of the situation without any major harm, everyone young kid might not be this lucky! In my next note, I will discuss a few tips on how to secure kids in your family or surroundings from such nasty men (and sometimes women too).

PS: For those who do not know what TakeBackThetech is? Check out my blog post:
Let’s TBTT!

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Posted in Religion, Food for Thought, Female Harrassment, Social Good | 6 Comments »

Hum Mustafavi hain!

I have been getting fits of nostalgia for the past few days ever since I have watched the Olpers ad for Ramazan. We used to read this naat during our school days and I had al most forgotten it but watching the Olpers ad brought back all the lovely school life memories This naat was originally presented by Mehdi Zaheer in 70’s I guess when the OIC’s Islamic Summit was held in Pakistan. Lovely piece that gives a strong feeling of unity and solidarity calling the entire Muslim nation “Mustafavi” i.e. followers of Mustafa (Muhammad Peace be upon him).

Original Version by Mehdi Zaheer is this:

PS: I’m confused as to whether call it Naat or Milli Naghma or something else :S

Posted in Religion, Poetry | 17 Comments »

Coincidence!

Yesterday, I was sitting all confused, a bit frightened too, not too willing to trust people because of the few people I have come across and who turned out to be completely different from what they seemed to be or what they claimed to be. One thought that was circling around inside my mind was "Whom to trust and whom not to?", "Who is true and who’s not? ", "Shall I forgive those who turn out to be liars/hypocrites?" and it was then that I sat down to get my daily dose of Quranic verses and amazingly enough I got my hands on this verse:

 Show forgiveness, enjoin Al-’Urf (the good), and turn away from the foolish (don’t punish them). ) (200. And if an evil whisper comes to you from Shaytan, then seek refuge with Allah. Verily, He is All-Hearer, All-Knower.)

(Surah Al-Araf Ayat No. 199) (Web Reference: Tafsir.com)

(Tafsir can be found here)

SubhanAlllah…what a co-incidence…i said to myself but just then i recalled what I had read in the book "Your Sacred Quest" by Wayne Dyer just a few days back; that we live in God’s intelligent system where there’s intelligence behind whatever happens.So true! Once you accept this, you’ll enjoy experiencing co-incidences as with this new perception, you’ll get to see the intelligence behind them as well

Undoubtedly,  He(SWT) is GREAT!

Posted in Religion, Food for Thought, Personal | 13 Comments »

Gift of faith!

For years I prayed Allah(SWT) for 3 things (along with several more ) which I thought I need as badly as oxygen but I just got 0.5 of the 3 things I prayed so hard for. When I came to know that I’m no way getting the 1st thing..I wept and mourned over it for months until I got the half of the 2nd thing; but when I didn’t get the remaining half, I cried this time not for months not even for weeks or days but for mere few hours. Today, when I came to know that I haven’t got the 3rd thing in the list as well, I at first felt a little down but this feeling didn’t last for more than 10 mins Sound of Azaan-e-Asr entered my ears, went to offer prayers and came back all refreshed. My faith tells me that He(SWT) has better plans for me and He(SWT) will never leave me disappointed. He is there to take care of all my problems and worries. Belief and patience is what brings peace of mind.

Has anyone of you ever wondered why children are so carefree? Out of many reasons, one is probably that they have this faith that their parents who are stronger than them are there to take care of them and solve all their problems. In a similar way, if we start believing that Allah(SWT) who’s the Almighty hence certainly stronger than us is there, and his love is 70 times stronger than that of our mother’s so, he’ll bring the BEST to us, life becomes a lot more beautiful and peaceful Alhamdulilah.

 "O you who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance (sabr) and prayer…" (al-Baqarah 2:153)

Web reference is this

I read once that believers seek goodness and beauty in every event.I now understand it well

Posted in Religion, Personal | 12 Comments »

Fundamentalism

Few years back in one of the social sciences class, our instructor asked us “Are you Fundamentalists?” Our instant reply was “No, Sir…no way”. Then he asked, “Do you believe that the Holy Quran is meant for all times and for all kinds of environments?” This time our instant reply was “Yes, Sir…Alhamdulilah being Muslims we do believe in this fact.” On that he showed us an excerpt from a book on sociology and the excerpt was as following:

In “Popular Conceptions of Fundamentalism”, anthropologist Lionel Caplan (1987) offers his readers one of the clearest overviews of a complex religious phenomenon – fundamentalism, a belief in the timeless nature of sacred writings and a belief that such writings apply to all kinds of environments”

After reading this from a book which was quite an authentic one and knowing that our instructor always checks the veracity of all the information he shares with us, all we could do was to say “Yes” when he asked his first question again.

Btw.. I would also like to ask the same question from all the readers of this post “ Are you a fundamentalist?”

Posted in Religion, Modernism/PostModernism | 8 Comments »

Enlightened Moderation: Desi Version of Enligtenment!

Most of us believe that everyone needs to modernize in order to cope up with the dynamics of this world. We feel that its ok to change ourselves with changing times as long as we don’t compromise on our religious principles and so Mush came up with the concept of Enlightened Moderation. A huge number of Pakistanis except religious fanatics welcomed this notion since it seemed to lead to a neutral path…“deen aur duniya saath saath” I also supported it up until I began to formally study what “Enligtenment” is. Enlightenment in its real sense is an effort to humanize religion. Mr. M. J. Inwoods explains the leading doctrines of Enlightenment as shared by most of the spokesmen in the Oxford Companion (1995,236) and one of those doctrines goes on as ‘ Beliefs are accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts or tradition. Thus Enlightenment thinkers tended to atheism, or at most to a purely natural deism, shorn of supernatural and miraculous elements and designed primarily to support an enlightened moral code and in some cases to account for the faith that the universe is a rational system wholly accessible to human reason.” This very clearly shows that Enlightenment leads to the replacement of religion by reason and rationality.

In order to modernize Pakistan, Mush also wanted to have this sort of "Enligtenment" but since it was too difficult to openly reject the supremacy of religion so he came up with a desi version of it giving it the name of "Enlightened Moderation". It is just a softer image of the original concept so we shouldn’t fall in the trap because initially this desi version may seem to be tolerant towards Islam but would ultimately lead to the rejection of it. In fact, even now we can see the repercussions all around in the form of the amendments being made to the curriculum and the demolition of Mosques in Islamabad which are just a few examples.

Posted in Religion, Modernism/PostModernism | 11 Comments »