Gay rights, American Muslims and religious laws

American Muslims! do you want American Laws to be based on religion? if not then why all the arguments against gay marriage are coming from religion?

If you have been to Muslim gathering, especially for Jummah namaz, you would have met many concerned muslims and heard ceremons from the pulpits. I did…..

Recent declaration by Obama to end descrimination against Gays marrige rights have stirred quite a bit of uneasynes among religious leadership (if there is something like that in Muslim community of America)

In masajids you might be Imam mentioning gay rights and getting angry on that. You will hear things like they are going to indocternate the children, if we alow gays getting married then next they will going to allow sex with animals, and even you might hear the argument it is slippery slop if we tolerate gays getting married next it might be having sex with kids (yup, for a second i could not believe when I heard such arguments), one Imam pointed out that your child might come home and say dad today my teacher Ms. Jeniffer’s husband came to visit her and her name was Andrea, what you are going to say to them.

I will not go in details about “question of consent” which an animal can’t give. Or Muslim children grow in America where most of the kids are having sex (straight or not) or atleast know that kids around them have boy friends or girl friends. So how traumatic their teacher having gay husband would be?

I will not even go and discuss that in this society people of any inclination are having sex with who ever they want and are open about it, so is big fuss is just giving them legal rights (which as a human they must have) not the physical act itself?

Keep all these aside, and acknowledging that all Ibrahimic religions (Jeudaism, Christianity and Islam) view being gay a sinful act. Question is which one of these wants to have American laws defined according to the religion? Do jews and muslims want America to have Christian laws? If not then why the reasoning they are presenting is coming from the religion?

Why I only hear God has forbiden this act, Allah destroyed a nation for that, ……. where are other detailed reasonings. Because if we start having religious argument here, where it will stop. Why not next have discussion about who could actually be called Christian or Jew or Muslim? Why not go ahead and ban any criticism of any religion? But then who will define religion? Why should Christians accept Islam to be religion? if they do then why not some Spagheti God? Should punishments be also derived from Bible, old and new Testaments?

American Muslims should know better, religious arguments about laws will lead to religions laws and those laws might not be ones that let minorities flourish.

 

concerns on Dean Abernathy’s vague proposal

{for people who don’t know what’s going around, have a look at http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/the-outcry/}

Dean Abernathy posted her proposal (http://www.eng.ufl.edu/news/special-announcement-by-the-dean-cammy-r-abernathy/ on 14th of April) as “special announcement”. Keeping aside that this is the first time students got official access to the proposal, this 3 page proposal is so vague, without proper studies and references that I fear if it was grant request, it will be rejected by any NSF or any other grant agency. Without input from stakeholders or future cost/benefit  analysis it does not even stands as initial business plan.  We, students of CISE, don’t question her integrity, work ethics or good intentions, but that’s what we are scared of  that this is not well thought proposal.

I would like to concentrate on the Key Highlights and Clarification section, especially the portion under “Key  considerations regarding proposed CISE restructure:”

• It is stated that undergraduate is already co-administrated by the CISE and ECE, but fails to state that there was committee formed by Dean Abernathy that recommended how the undergraduate courses could be managed keeping the current structure intact.
• The web post goes on to state that the restructure will allow elimination of the duplication. Mantra that there is duplication is being drummed without providing any proof. One would expect that this conclusion has been reached after a detailed study about the courses offered by both departments. Dean is not able to cite any such study. Infact she herself indicated the CISE faculty is not happy with it and now we know  CISE faculty has previously rejected merger with ECE, which indicates that they don’t believe there is serious overlap between the two departments especially in the graduate level courses.
• Statement cites Georgia Tech where computer science is housed in engineering department. Again failing to tell that Georgia Tech has “College of Computing”  and “Interactive Computing” also. Further look at their Computer and Engineering College will reveal that they have sizeable computer science faculty.Whereas Dean Abernathy’s proposal will only move 10 or 15 computer science Faculty member ot ECE, even that she says will depend upon whom ECE wants to invite. Funding, grants and people politics might result in far fewer computer science faculty members in the ECE to offer a viable computer science program.
• Third and fourth points, I am sorry to state, are totally unsubstantiated. With less than one third computer science faculty in ECE and all the current CISE students in ECE, how can you run a research program? Especially when half of the faculty will be Teach-Only position lingering in the halls of CISE, forced to teach without giving any facility to do research.

I would request her reconsider her proposal, form committee of her peers (faculty members of ECE, CISE, ISE and BME) let them help her in making these decisions. I wish Dr. Abernathy good luck, because if she makes a wrong decision College Of Engineering will lose enrollment and thus great source of revenue and pride: that is their students. One hopes provost and president of UF will take a serious interest and save CISE.

Thanks

 

Syria?

How many people will more die before something is done?

That’s the question that keeps popping in mind, that’s question everyone is asking,

As simple as the question is, answer is not that straight one. Question should be when and how should other countries get involve? Should forces be sent, will sanctions will work? if force is used to what extent and what is objective? Remove the regime? replace it with what? with whom?

While I am writing these words, I keep thinking about the people who are dying, I keep seeing the face of journalist Marie Colvin.

I saw her talking about Syria just yesterday on CNN. I remember her because of her having that eye-patch.

Then those faceless people who are dying come into my mind. All the questions that I have put before, they all are valid, but to the person protecting his/her family do they matter?

One has to ask why we need Arab League and IOC if they will not do anything.

 

Car Crashes on I75 near Paynes Prairie Gainesville

10 people have died in the highway pile up at Interstate 75.

A sad day in Gainesville. Especially sad on the stupidity of people who caused the fire at Paynes Prairie which resulted in these accidents.A stupid mistake if it was mistake; police is considering arson also.

About 18 people are still in hospital, hope they get well.

 
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

 

Plz couples, decouple your social log ins

We know you are married or girlfriend/boyfriend or together or whatever,

we know you have already decided this is your happily-ever-after,

that you can’t hide anything from each other, you tell everything to her or him

that you have joint account,

that you share your souls,

But please don’t share our messages, they can’t play any role in your eternal love

I don’t care if you have joint piggy banks, I don’t want to communicate XYZ-company when I want to talk to XYZ

don’t let me write “Cheetay kia hal hea, aaj to …… ho gaya yar”  on gtalk

and get replied with “it’s ABC (girl-friend), XYZ is in office/lab or next room”

No no no, I don’t want to share with your better half  (no offense) what I want to share with you, atleast not in exactly those words.

please decouple them

please like a reasonable social humans don’t share your passwords so that your friends don’t always have to be guessing who will be on the other side of the screen. You really don’t think it will be good idea if I tell I saw your ex-girlfriend or love-flame, believe me no matter how much you trust your better half, that day you will get extra salty daal (if you ever get it that day).

hide your emails and vault your e-presence if not for you sake for your friends sake.

P.S. you setting a bad precedence for future couples, if I ever get example of you people when I refuse to have joint-social account, …… its not gona be good for our friendship.

 

Maya Khan Fired; Pakistani social media’s firstblood ?

When Maya Khan took out the camera and start filming people in the parks, she did not knew what will happen afterwards, she had not expected that Social Media will go crazy on that. Youtube clips of Maya-Khan Squad rounding the couples and humiliating them made everyone cringe,……. Facebook hummed her name, blog after blog start appearing criticizing her, then some portion of main-media actually took notice, (tribune was posting blogs already) BBC’s urdu section without naming her wrote a wonderful piece. (Aap Toa Naeb-e-Khuda Hean), she tried to give half hear-ted apology which was more of explanation with an ounce of showing that she understands why people are angry.

Today, Maya Khan has been fired,

I was not expecting that, did not knew Pakistani social media could be a little powerful,  did not fathomed that criticism by the public can force cooperate’s hand to correct the mistake, we are the nation where 100 people die due to medicine-reaction and no one cares, but here it happened, sound was too loud to be muted.

Is this Pakistani social media’s first blood, I don’t know but it is one quite visible one. It’s power, let’s use it properly and effectively? Next topic? Medicine companies? well if not big shots atleast we will be able to mute out the people who announce Kafir Fatwas on Tv.

 

Beating your wife? Why are we not rejecting these?

Somehow I reached to this video(http://youtu.be/Y-Tw7WhH_aQ ) in which some Arabic (socalled) scholar was telling about Rules of Beating your wife. He had audacity to say that this honors the wife, because it is for her discipline. Oh no wait wait, he does say that man cannot beat wife on food or work or anything else, he can beat wife for only one point, i.e. when she refuses to sleep with her? Get it!

Well I don’t, For the people who actively believe that it is to give discipline to wife, what if the husband is undisciplined? he is selling things of house, he is misbehaving with the relatives, or anyother thing for which anyone thinks that wife could be beaten, should not wife has a right to beat her husband?

I don’t get why Muslims cannot setup a committee for Ijtihad and say you know these things even if previously thought to be valid (which I don’t believe were valid at anytime, I believe beating wife is misrepresentation of the word) are no more valid. Why are we shy of taking important decisions?

We need to understand that cannot live in this “push everything under the carpet” situation, we need to talk and discuss these very serious issues. We need to tackle such issues, make declaration that acts of one person beating other, acts of having slave or any such actions have lost all of the validity, even if such validity existed.

 

Annie Hall, thoughts and words (Balcony Scene)

Do I need to say anything? just watch this and you will know  (although starting dialogues are uneasy ones, but when the sub-titles start poping up showing the thinking of the characters vs what they are syaing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLblwVUEHyw

 

Muhammad Asad…. does anyone from Pakistan know him?

during conversation with an American Muslim friend, my friend quoted something from the Muhammad Asad’s book. I did not knew about him. Only thing I knew about him was that he wrote “the Road to Makkah” and nothing more.
To my amazement I found out he was given Pakistani citizen and become part of Pakistan’s Foreign ministry. Very interesting personality. Have a look at his wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Asad
I never knew about those aspects of his life and (I might be wrong) I think that not many Pakistani know about him.

 

Broncos, Tim Tebow and Gainesville

You know there are people who you just like, whose success are cherish by many people who might not have any direct contact with him, the successes which might be just small. Tim Tebow appears to be one of them, a lucky one I must say.

Today he did it again, the last pass (which finally he made) resurrected his image of quarterback you should be always be watching. Although he ruined previous two chances by taking too much time before making a pass and once almost getting sacked. The last pass just put him back on the list. He should be thankful to the defense that did the hell of job in containing the competitors.

His success is being cheered by many of the people who might even not like Broncos. Most of the Gainesville wants Broncos to succeed because of Tim Tebow . He has this feel good thing about him. people want him to succeed; to be fair it has very less to do with his being religious or not. Just a microseconds Broncos made touchdown, facebook was full with the status updates and tweeter was singing.

Here is for Tim Tebow and this is for Gators and for Tebowing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/08/tebow-thomas-broncos-steelers-overtime-win-thomas_n_1193054.html

something interesting about 316 passing yards and 3:16 on his face

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/fade-black/2012/jan/8/sunday-school-tim-tebow/