Of serious thoughts: religion & life

As always im still stumped about my religion. I believe in it. I know He is always there, an Omniscient presence watching over my family and I. Yet I feel like He is something beautiful I see in the corner of my eye and once I turn to look at it, it disappears immediately. I wish I could find a way to make that reality stay. Im really confused. Morality and religion. What makes one a good Muslim? What is even the definition of a muslim? How do you determine whether God thinks you are a Muslim or not? I believe in Islam and I think it is the religion for mankind but some things still stump me and I feel like I’m running around in circles chasing my own tail. Inside an endless mazelike labyrinth of possibilities and hopes. I am lost.

I still think Islam in today’s context has been misinterpreted. I think the jurists nowadays suck big time and the sly demons; misguided Orientalists of the West have reduced Islam to an arcane, mythical religion founded on the roots of barbarism. I think Islam nowadays, the Islam that MOST Muslims see and practice has fragments of the original religion mixed with the tainted aspects of the West’s meddling in it. Who knows maybe the stuff we take to heart have been misinterpreted and manipulated by those cunning enemies of real Islam.

Sometimes I think of the Planet of the Apes. How all the apes tried so hard to suppress the human beings because they knew that humans were the real masters of the world and they feared them. Because they knew the truth, that they were inferior once and humans ruled- the truth is hard to accept. Maybe Islam is like that too. Wait correction, I KNOW ISLAM is like that. It isn’t about old men in beards and moustaches reciting verses from the Quran they barely even understand. It is not about those who follow the ritualistic aspects of Islam being superior to the ones who actually might have the brains to begin to grasp what real Islam might be about. True rituals are important but I think the whole concept has been turned upside down and instead of focusing on the essence of Aqidah, they are focusing on the physical, ritualistic aspect which is important too but rather ineffective without belief. And humans are not robots. They are creatures of reason and emotion and I think the truth is that Muslims nowadays do not know how to appeal to those fundamental aspects of the human soul anymore. It has become rank and stale like a beautiful room gone to waste; that has not been aired or maintained properly. If Islam were a house, the Prophet would weep to see the state Islam is in today. I don’t think there exists any scholar today who can properly portray what Islam is all about…To revolutionize the entire way of Islamic thinking. It reminds me of Atlantis the animated movie where Atlantis was once a great advanced nation with impressive technology but its later generations no longer knew how to make use of the massive amount of resources left to them.

I hate it when I’m forced to believe things as they are just because they’ve always been that way. I need proof to support my belief. I don’t just believe in a religion just because I was born into it. I know I haven’t done enough research to even begin to understand the wealth of my religion. But I know for a fact, with the faculties of thinking vested in me, that Islam is undoubtedly the way of life our Creator has intended for us. Because it is in line with our very intrinsic nature. It is not harmful to life and us. In fact it is pervasive, like a deep, deep underground river, always present but out of sight and flowing powerfully. It doesn’t go against the rocks, it shapes them and forms the awe inspiring landscapes we see around us. Nothing happens without reason or purpose.

For example, the many aspects of Islam that are so beautiful and perfectly moulded for humanity and the sanctity of the thing we call our soul, are often sidetracked and swept under the rug in favour of annoying debates over topics that should not even be an issue in the first place-whether a girl who doesn’t wear a headscarf would go to hell or not. Whether all non Muslims would end up in hell because they do not profess and verbally express the Shahadah. In the first place who are the Muslims nowadays to determine whether the so called non Muslims would go to hell? What makes YOU think you are in a perfect state of Muslim-hood to judge other people who might not have been fortunate enough to be born into truth. If that is the case, if non Muslims were all to end up in hell regardless of their deeds, just because they did not verbally express the Shahadah and live a strictly “Muslim” lifestyle, then why should us so called Muslims not be equally responsible for propagating the truth to the these people? If we fail in our duty to represent the truth in a good image, as what it is, how then can we blame the non-believers from believing? So my reasoning is this, if we ourselves cannot portray the image of Islam properly- as what it is, as a mercy to mankind- how can we call ourselves “Muslims”? So you see in my opinion, the definition of who is or is not a Muslim should be left entirely to God. In the meantime, you try to abide by the rules and apply it to your life as best as you can and hope that God is actually more merciful than those white beards make Him out to be. That’s all I can say for now.

There are countless “non-Muslims” who have contributed way more to humanity than a ragged mat rempit “Muslim” wastrel ever is capable of doing. All those scientists dedicated to finding cures for incurable diseases and the Christian doctors risking their lives in war torn Palestine to save the victims of Israel’s cruel massacre-what of them? The very fact that they are able to compete on a fair ground with “Muslims”…does it not show that God is just and fair? That He has a masterplan for every individual. And it is up to us to use our brains to see the Truth that’s been lying smack between our eyes all along.

My generation created the sexual revolution - and it has been wrecking the lives of women ever since

Got this article from my friend who posted it up on facebook. I find it an insightful read and something that rarely comes out of post-modern liberalism toting America.

By BEL MOONEY

When the novelist Martin Amis said recently that it was the sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies that destroyed his 'pathologically promiscuous' sister Sally, an alcoholic who died in 2000 aged 46, he provoked a wave of controversy. His views were ridiculed by his critics, who claimed that his sister 'was out of control. It was her doing, not the culture.'

Well, I was part of that culture too. As a university student between 1966 and 1969, I experienced first-hand the impact of the sexual revolution, and the sweeping changes it wrought between men and women.

To suggest any individual was immune from that tidal wave of change, or from the pressures that came with it, for women in particular, is frankly wrong.

Yet Amis has hit a nerve, with liberals in particular, who rightly read his comments as a criticism of everything they believed in and fought for through the massive social upheavals of those decades. It was not 'the free love culture' which caused her death, they insist, but her own self-indulgence. After all, we all have choices, don't we?

To me, this is one of the most fascinating issues of our time - raising so many questions about freewill, and cause and effect.

• I'm always amazed at the way the liberal Left (a broad church, with which I'd have once identified) is eager to make excuses for any dubious results of their progressive ideas.

Yet the damaging consequences of that Sixties revolution are obvious in the society we now live in - ranging from the utter mess made of education in this country (directly attributable to the overturning of traditional ideas in the Seventies, an orthodoxy which still prevails), to the dangerous 'anything goes' attitude which challenges any idea of restraint in speech or behaviour.

I happen to believe Martin Amis makes an interesting case. Who is to say he isn't right and that in a less 'liberal' society his sister might have behaved differently, or might have been safer?

2009: Ladette behaviour is a direct result of the freedom women fought for

Of course any individual is a unique, complex, multi-faceted creation - shaped by family, by personal reactions to events, and by the random nature of sex and love.

Nevertheless it's absurd to suggest that we exist in isolation, that we are not shaped by the culture we inhabit.

The zeitgeist is the defining mood or spirit of a particular period in history and shaped by the ideas and beliefs of the time. Nobody can escape it.

So Amis asks us to pose this question: what were the pressures on a particular girl - his sister - who turned 20 in 1974? And, equally important; what is the ongoing effect on the society of today?

Oh yes, they were heady days, out of which many good things came. But at university I could see close-up the impact of the sexual revolution and the 'new' pressure to sleep around. It was expected; nobody wanted to be called 'uncool' or 'uptight'.

People have always had sex before (and illicit sex within) marriage. You only have to think of the excesses of the first sexual revolution - the 'roaring' Twenties. But our sexual revolution was more sweeping and long-lasting.

'Health centres handed out the Pill like sweeties'

The university Student Health Centre handed out the Pill like sweeties. So you wouldn't get pregnant - good. But at the same time you had no reason to be careful - bad. Most of us embraced the hippie-esque idea that sexual freedom was a beautiful thing to be celebrated. 'Seize the day,' we shouted, and threw old notions like fidelity out of the window.

But beneath all those naive and high-sounding ideals, the sexism of supposedly radical and free-thinking men on the left could be summed up with: 'A woman's place is underneath.'

As the writer and feminist pioneer Rosie Boycott has said: 'What was insidious about the underground was that it pretended to be alternative. But it wasn't providing an alternative for women. It was providing an alternative for men in that there were no problems about screwing around.'

The artist Nicola Lane, another young woman of the age, adds: 'It was paradise for men - all these willing girls. But the problem with the willing girls was that a lot of the time they were willing not because they particularly fancied the people concerned but because they felt they ought to. There was a lot of misery.'

Sex mad: A mock up of a Cosmopolitan magazine cover, showing cover lines from recent editions

An acceptance of casual sex was central to the spirit of the age, and it was not easy for a young woman to escape that influence, whether it made her uncomfortable or not.

One cultural historian of the Seventies, Howard Sounes, writes: 'The after-effects of the great social and cultural changes of the Sixties, like waves created by rocks tossed in water, rippled out through society.'

Today, those of us who express doubts about the long-term effects of such cultural changes are dismissed as prudes suffering from a permanent moral panic-attack. The denial of the liberals is ongoing: a blinkered refusal to admit the causes and effects of history.

But this is what the distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm writes about the shift in standards in his authoritative book, Age Of Extremes: 'The crisis of the family was linked with quite dramatic changes in public standards governing sexual behaviour, partnership and procreation... and the major change is datable and coincides with the Sixties and Seventies.'

No wonder the Seventies saw an unprecedented explosion in writing about sex. The air-brushed innocence of Sixties Playboy gave way to the gynaecological explicitness of Penthouse and a host of imitators.

Sex, which in previous eras was private (even taboo), became public, with the result that women were expected - in their love lives - to demonstrate the expertise of prostitutes. Except these 'liberated' women gave it away for free.

Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide To Lovemaking, came out in 1972, and that same year the first issue of British Cosmopolitan changed women's magazines for ever.

'To be a nice girl was to be looked on as a freak'

I was working on a glossy magazine at the time and we all looked askance at this brash newcomer with its philosophy that women should do anything to be sexy and get a man. (By the mid-Seventies, I was writing for it - although the Cosmo of those days was relatively innocent compared with now, when the magazine is often covered up in American stores because of the explicitness of its cover lines.)

Books such as Cosmo's Steamy Sex Games: All Sorts Of Naughty Ways To Have Fun With Your Lover' (and countless others) carried the message that if you don't want to do this stuff, well, there's something wrong with you.

To be a 'nice girl' was to be looked on as a freak. The truth was, however, the new permissiveness gave men permission to exploit you. These are the pressures which, according to Martin Amis, contributed to his sister's ruin.

It may be cruel to say it, but today's young girls primping and un-dressing for Saturday night, when they will get drunk and get laid (and feel doubly bad in the morning) are the inheritors of her destiny.

Bleakly, Amis commented: 'It's astonishingly difficult to find a decent deal between men and women and we haven't found it yet.'

I suggest it is impossible to find that 'deal' when we are living with the worst aspects of the sexual revolution - which has not encouraged mutual love and respect between the sexes but instead has given us the trashy 'pornogrification' of our society.

Dangerous: When Tom Cruise is stupid enough to permit his three-year-old to totter out in high heels, what hope is there for fans who see him as a role-model?

As the young American writer Ariel Leve has said: 'Even though this new world of beer and babes feels foreign to Sixties revolutionaries, it is actually... a repercussion of the very forces they put into motion.'

She's right. We did start it - and those who followed paid the price, and are paying it still.

In her book, Bodies, psychotherapist Susie Orbach writes: 'Girls as young as four have been made bodily self- conscious and are striking sexy poses in their mirrors which are more chilling than charming.'

The question we must all ask ourselves is - what made them so bodily self-conscious?

I'm afraid we know the answer. When Tom Cruise and his wife are stupid enough to permit their three-year-old daughter to totter out in silver high heels, what hope is there for those millions of fans who see them as heroic role-models?

Nowadays, parents (the ' grandchildren' of the sexual revolution) have no compunction about dressing their little girls as minihookers and taking them along to see sexually explicit acts like the Pussycat Dolls, where dancers mimic sex on stage.

Those girls grow up to post pictures of themselves posing like porn stars on the internet. Indeed, a third of teenage girls, we learnt this week, text sexually explicit pictures of themselves, too. And so it goes on.

'We were conned into abandoning self-respect'

Is it any wonder that the phenomenon of young teenage boys expecting their girlfriends to provide sexual gratification at any time (on a school bus, for example, according to Susie Orbach) leaves girls feeling abused and full of hate for their bodies - the very bodies so cynically exploited for commercial gains throughout a sexualised media?

There is sexual pressure on women as never before and no matter how much women achieve in the boardroom or as helicopter pilots, it makes a nonsense of equality.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association issued a report citing innumerable contributing causes to the sexualising of young girls, including music videos, TV and advertising. Are they to be accused of 'moral panic'?

When a magazine like Zoo can run a competition in which men send in pictures of their girlfriends' breasts along with a picture of the celebrity breasts they most admire, and the prize is a remodelling of the girlfriend's to match the ideal breasts - then something is very, very wrong.

The ongoing sexual 'revolution' is, in truth, as selfish and reactionary as those groovy Seventies men were, when Martin Amis's sister was young. She, like so many others, was conned by the talk of freedom into abandoning all self-respect.

The sad thing is young women today are still being conned - victims of the pervasive sex industry which uses 'liberation' as a mask for degradation.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1232485/My-generation-created-sexual-revolution--wrecking-lives-women-since.html#ixzz0VcW24ITI