Islam and Sacrifice

The concept of "Sacrifice (Qurbaani)" which is believed to be one of the important essences of Islamic philosophy becomes narrower and selfish when it is only promoted through the practice of animal slaughtering. A pure sacrifice can only be achieved from freeing one's personal greediness and ego. One’s sins cannot be absolved by the blood of another. In Islam, all that is demanded as a sacrifice is one's personal willingness to submit one's ego and individual will to Allah. This is what the Holy Quran says in Chapter (64) sūrat l-taghābun :

“So fear Allah as much as ye can; listen and obey and spend in charity for the benefit of your own soul and those saved from the covetousness of their own souls,- they are the ones that achieve prosperity.”

Islam actually tried to break away from the longstanding tradition of appeasing an "angry God" by animal sacrifices practiced during the pre-Islamic Arab world. Both Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son as per Allah’s order (which was only a test and never meant to be realized) and Ismail’s willingness to surrender his own life to fulfill his father’s duty to Allah signifies the virtue of ultimate sacrifice. This action only symbolically represents the paramount psychological determination needed for surrendering human being’s closest emotional attachments to great Allah's mercy and justice. According to Surah 22. Al-Hajj, Ayah 37:

“It is not their (animals for sacrifice) meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah: it is your piety that reaches Him: He has thus made them subject to you, that ye may glorify Allah for His guidance to you: And proclaim the Good News to all who do right.”

“No one should suppose that meat or blood is acceptable to the One True God. It was a pagan fancy that Allah could be appeased by blood sacrifice. But Allah does accept the offering of our hearts, and as a symbol of such offer, some visible institution is necessary. He has given us power over the brute creation, and permitted us to eat meat, but only if we pronounce His name at the solemn act of taking life, for without this solemn invocation, we are apt to forget the sacredness of life. By this invocation we are reminded that wanton cruelty is not in our thoughts, but only the need for food …" (Yusuf Ali commentary)

Dear Pranjal

Tuesday, March 3, 2015, 1:53 AM

The Icfai Guest House,

Chaltlang, Aizawl

Dear Pranjal,

It’s been more than a week that you have moved on to your new life. I still remember when you said that it is only one person that we are going to miss but for you it’s an entire world with so many persons that you are going to miss. I hope you have slowly but surely adjusted to your new surroundings. The news of you leaving came all of a too sudden that I couldn't really feel its true magnitude at that point. And that’s kind of strange because no one was perhaps more aware than me about how things were gradually proceeding to one particular direction. Besides, the busiest last few days had hardly offered me any opportunity to think about the future empty sofa in our living room which we often used to share while watching those noisy prime time television debates. It was only during our last dine out together with Taslima and Co at Floria where I started to realize that once you will not be there, things are going to change forever.

So what has changed…? First of all I have started to miss the office bus a little too frequently and that is bad considering the fact that Tim has almost stopped bringing his car to Aizawl, ruling out the luxury of my second option. I had earlier realized that there won’t be any fighting for front seat when you won’t be there but that you can see is not even among the least that I have gained from the situation. Now me and Tim are in a “consideration phase” of reviving my vintage motor bike for the purpose. The emptiness that you have left inside our guest house had become so annoying that one day we replaced our giant dining table with a small study table. This may sound stupid but it somehow helped by cutting short the unoccupied space between us when only three of us are now eating together. Among all these the only thing that I couldn't replace is perhaps the times when you and me used to come out from our respective rooms after our failed attempts to sleep and sat together to discuss on and on about life, career, politics, culture, girls, marriage, dreams….yes, those unending sagas of frustrations and hopes.

I don’t know how often we will be able to meet in future. I don’t know how often we will be able to call each other… As from my own experiences, I have came to know that the occasions of physical, telephonic and electronic contacts tends to become less frequent with passing time and growing distance. However, my optimism about our friendship is strengthened by the sincere hope that you, me and Manjit might have a very common connection in near future.

And lastly one thing that I want to remind both of us is that we have too many unfinished tasks at hand. I remember you often used to say that we keep talking but never do. Now since we will have less chance to talk, may be we should focus more on doing.

I wish you all the best and I know you will be the best in whatever you do…

Shamim                                                            

Dear Manjit

12:30 pm, August 11, 2013

The Icfai Guest House,

Chaltlang, Aizawl

Dear Manjit,

It’s a mix emotion of sadness, nostalgia and excitement I’m going through in the proportion of 50:30:20 respectively, as I am going to pen down my heart and mind in these eco-friendly, elemental chlorine free papers produced by ITC.

I sometime wonder why I can’t exactly remember the first time we met. This is unusual as I can vividly recall about the occasions when I met others for the first time at Aizawl. I met Pranjal in the late May of 2010 at our old Icfai campus in Chaltlang; I met Gyanashri in January, 2012 picnic at Sairang; I met Koyel on a November afternoon in 2012 at your very own place… However, I do remember the kind of unease that we used to feel during our initial encounters and you too have acknowledged this during our Champhai trip this year. I believe that sense of unease was due to our own reflective individual personalities, which I find quite natural when two people of similar intellectual abilities sits opposite to each other. It’s like the silent counter magnetism – the repulsive phenomenon between two identically polarized magnets. It took some amount of time before we became really close friends, and that is the beauty of bonding; the same magnets can have the strongest bind between them when any of the poles subjectively gets reversed.

I don’t want to sound too exaggerating but I must acknowledge that you are intellectually superior to many of your peers.  I also firmly believe that you still deserve more than what you have achieved till now. You have the kind of leadership qualities that generally change makers possesses. I know that you are aware of your own qualities as much as I do and that is why I need not act like a mentor who speaks in the common mechanical motivating lines derived out of his own snobbery.

I do believe that people like us have larger roles and greater responsibilities to offer. I know that no matter how much you will achieve in the world is not going to sufficiently satisfy you until you pay back your debt to your own family, your own people, and your own place. That is why I would like to see you coming back to India and to the northeast once you complete your formal education from abroad. What bothers me these days is that there are a lot of divisive forces that are playing insensitive games with the short-term emotions of ordinary people. Technically speaking, I am not opposed to boundaries that separates region on the basis of geo-political or socio-cultural identity but I am strongly opposed to the boundaries that divides people. It’s a high time for us to stand against these divisive forces.

Finally, I would like to confess one thing that I am not very good at keeping contacts. But this does not mean that I think any less of my old relationships. I would like to assure you that our friendship will be preserved like a half-read novel. After any unconditional hiatus of any duration, we will certainly begin from the point where we left.

Wishing you all the best for everything…

Shamim

Violence Vs Violence

It disturbs me immensely when people tend to go back to history and try to dig out the cause rather than channelizing their collective intellects in focusing on the effect. This perhaps reflects nothing but an underlying perverted intention of justifying the wrong. Today, what is important for all of us is to stress on the urgent need of putting an end to the terrible wrong that is going on in Bengal. The changing character and present scenario of politics in West Bengal has reached to an alarming level. It’s really shocking to see fountain pens are being replaced by Javelins. If things like this continue, many of us would lose the respect that once we used to have for our glorious past students and youth movements. This may be a high time to come together to disassociate the students movement from our constantly deteriorating mainstream politics. However, it would be foolish to hope for an immediate change knowing how things work and spark in Bengal. “An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind” – I’m afraid today that Bengal doesn’t turns out to be the living example of what MG had once warned. 

Rapists of Article 19

The country we are living has become a pathetic place where:

• Singers are threatened and forced to quit without any sense of reasonableness shown by self-declared protectors of religion and culture.
• Movies are banned even before the public can actually see them to debate or justify their contents.
• Users of social networking sites are harassed, threatened and even charged by police for pointing out and acknowledging injustice.
• Books are banned along with their authors if they are critical about certain ideologies and beliefs.
• Paintings are torn, destroyed and painters forced into exile because some fundamentalists doesn’t have the eyes to appreciate and understand artistic sensibilities.
• Cartoonists are arrested because some politicians don’t have an appetite for humor and the minimum capacity to digest criticism.
• Police in the name of morality, raids, drags, beats and arrests young people for committing the “crime of enjoying life” in a metro.

The article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution of India gives its citizens the right to freedom of speech and expression but it seems that a handful of fringe elements and some vested interest groups have made a clear mockery of the whole concept of Freedom of Expression.

Every Indian citizen has the right to like, dislike, agree, disagree, accept, reject, appreciate, and criticize. But no one in India has any right to dictate and impose his/her views on others even to their own children if they are above 18 years of age. The most unfortunate part of all these is that the government which is supposed to be safeguarding the people’s rights has failed miserably in doing so. Due to narrow political compulsions and perhaps shortsightedness, the government thinks that they are playing safe by not interfering with certain groups and their exaggerated sentiments. The political parties (either in power or in opposition) believe that they are protecting their vote banks by projecting themselves as protecting sentiments of others.  However, this shortsightedness is because of the fact that in India the voices of the ‘Silent Majority’ have long been dominated and often been overpowered by the voices of the ‘Aggressive Minority’. Therefore the time has come for the Silent Majority to come out on the street and say it loud and clear that we won’t tolerate any Talibanization of our society and our country. It is perhaps a high time to hang the “Rapists of Article 19”.

Broken Down To Infinity

Weeks ago, it was the shocking molestation incident that got all the attention from the media from all over the country. The overexcited Newslive reporter was rightly criticized by everyone for putting TRPs over minimum sense of morality and incidentally arrested by the post-activated police. However, as soon as that happened, other news channels too tried to increase their TRPs by focusing on the same news and same disguised footage.

Now, coming on to the more pressing issue, we are still surprised how situations are being represented. Not only that the state machinery fails repeatedly to curb natural and unnatural disasters in Assam, but what is more shocking is that instead of taking a right perspective of the situation, everyone including the top ministers are busy finding someone or something else to pass on their blames.  On the other side, a portion of the media created headlines, where they highlighted words like “communal violence”, “riots” and “Bodos Vs Muslims” – a politically, socially and anthropologically incorrect title used to define the kind of violence. While some channels were careful and quick to distinguish between ethnic violence and communal riots, others simply didn’t seem to bother. “Bodos Vs Muslims” sounds as absurd as a cricket match between Punjab and the whole of India. First of all, Bodo is the official name of a Tribe, not a religion (of whom approximately 80 per cent are identified as Hindus and the remaining are followers of Christianity). They are predominantly concentrated in parts of north-eastern India. Muslims are the people who follow Islam as their religion. They are found all over the world, in all skin colors, speaks all sorts of their native languages and have their own distinct respective cultures. Though, it is true that the tension that broke between two sections was the Bodos and the other side happened to be Muslims. But why was it necessary to highlight a particular religion before everything else? Doesn’t it send in some way a confusing and incomplete impression of the region to the rest of the country? Doesn’t it hurt a particular community? Of course, it does. Therefore, here is a need to agree and reaffirm on certain basic points:

1. All Muslimls living in Assam (or anywhere else) are not Illegal Migrants.
2. All Illegal Migrants living in Assam (or anywhere else) are not Muslims.
3. All Migrants (Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Christians or Buddhists) living in Assam (or anywhere else) are not Illegal.

If taken together, since independence there have been way more Hindu migrations (including tribals) than Muslim migrations in India from Bangladesh. Migrants are migrants; they may be legal or illegal but need not be termed as Hindus or Muslims. Let me also clarify here that we are not dismissing the argument that, the root causes of these ethnic violence in Assam has a lot to do with the migration coupled with the feeling of deprivation and negligence among many native ethnic groups living in Assam. Take the example in West Bengal and Tripura where the problem of migration hasn’t been looked upon as severely as it has been in Assam. This is may be because of the cultural similarities between Bangladeshis and neighboring people of West Bengal and Tripura. In case of Assam such a cultural similarity is difficult to establish except in the districts of Cachar or Dhubri, where incidentally the majority population have always felt some kind of an identity crisis. Therefore, for Assam Migration has always been a cultural problem and was needed to be dealt as a cultural problem. The political parties never had any clear strategy to manage the ethnic diversity of Assam. Unfortunately, they were always luring themselves to secure power with narrow vote bank politics. They realized that it is easier to come to the power in Assam if it retains its sectional politics and thus never honestly worked for a Unified State.

The tragic compulsion for the helpless people to leave their motherland and migrate to a foreign land can be economic as well as socio-political pressure. Therefore, dealing with migration is equally a critical and sensitive issue which needs both diplomatic and humanitarian approach. Unfortunately both the Centre and the State have neither of them.

A Country Divided By Egos

Till now it used to be mostly Bollywood celebrities who makes spicy page 3 headlines for their love-hate relationships with other celebrities. But now, politicians who generally preaches about unity and integration or sportsmen who are supposed to put their country first no matter what, are indulging in childish and selfish ego-battles. Whether it is Pranab Vs Mamata, Modi Vs Nitish or Mahesh Vs Leander - its all and only about Ego. Demographically speaking, India is a young country, but I wonder when its leaders will care to grow up..!!!