Dear Mr. Turkman:
Thank you for your response and I appreciate your effort in justifying your spelling. But I must note that it is my life-long habit as a lawyer and a journalist - not to engage in debates for which I do not hold any authoritative argument. Although I have been practising law around the globe including USA,UK, India,Nepal, Singapore, South Korea,Bangaldesh and Australia (details can be found by typing my name on any major search engine on internet) for almost two decades now and I studied at Dhaka University, Harvard and London Metrpolitan University and I do have a US citizen as a child and a British citizen as well as my child, I will base my arguments on well-founded logics and rationale:
Firstly, I believe that the Americans have distorted the English grammaer as per their tongue and we do not need to get into the arguments between Webster and Oxford dictionaries and we wonder why many of the Americans pronounce Iraq as I-Raq. It is difficult as always to transliterta a foreign word and that's why until 9/11 many in the west used pronounce Islam as Izlam and we are at least out of that now. I believe that you would agree to the fact that to pronounce many arabic words in their true form, we would require to use phonetic signs - at least that is my idea after spending a few years as a lecturere in TOEFL and IELTS and with the top most score possible in that field. I do not believe that we have to learn the grammar of pronouncing words even from native English speaking people even though we may find to catch up with the accent sometimes.
Secondly, I raised the issue as I constatlt noticed your abhorrance towards Islamic issues (if I am wrong - I apologise) and your irrational generalisations. I have noticed a trend of using Moslim instead of Muslim by the Indian bengali community Hindus and therefore I was trying to find further details about your roots. I had a similar discussion with a Canadian Bengali Hindu Indian genteleman on Al Jazeera and you can find the details on the Al Jazeera website.
Thridly, I have no doubt in believing that most of the Bangladeshis are honest, hard-wroking, peace-loving and easily convincable.They are very pious too. Most of our people are poor day-labourers who hardly have anything to do wih national level of corruption and with this gap, the crude, shrewd and clever smarter class expolit their simplicity. Our country is in the grip of a few law-lords and fanatics of every level. Look at our CJ taking side and giving his opinion about law which is a complete violation of Judge's conduct and our Advisor arranging that meeting. In issues of women's rights - we have not seen Ulemas or Islamic scholars sitting with the opponents and yet view-exchanging meetings are held. They are talking about our inheritance and no one has talked about referrendum. Simplicity often paves the way often oppression unfotunately. There are several other reasons as well. We can simply eradicate almost 80% of our administrative corruption from the Judiciary by computerising the whole system and save the mass from long-waiting lists created artificially by Peshkars and Sherestadars. You must agree that it is more difficult to produce a HSBC statement from Dhaka than a Janata Bank statement from Netrokona. Why? Technology also safe-guards against corruption. Do you think the western people are less corrupt because they are generally more honest - not wholly true! The system of law will catch up. We have no effective Ombudsmen system or Independent Compalint Commission for Banks and other institutions and our law-makers and leaders befool us by running out of Parliaments as someone called someone a name. The ruling class have embedded the idea of democracy in our minds and we are too boxed to see the flaws of democratic systems in poor countries.
Fourthly, the puzzle of the words - 'Muslim', 'Moslem', 'Mohammadean' was first borught forward in this sub-continent by Mr. DF Mulla - hindu jurist on Islamic law in his Muslim Law. Please read forewords of the book if you can find it. The book is weidely available in law libraries in Dhaka.
I refer to your explanation of Phoenetics: there are many developments being done to English wordings and foregn words are being introduced in the dictionary and the experts are still baffled about their pronouncing rules, eg., Bhindi.
It is true that the nearest rule should be - Mawslim - but that would make the language complicated. 'O' is pronounced as AU in almost all words. The most accepted spelling according to all major illustrated English dictionary is Muslim and that's why whenever we look for Moslim - the dictionaries will refer to Muslim. Please Read The Oxford English Dictionary second Edition - Volume X. We should not start new complications by adopting complicated issues which have already been settled.
I think this settles the issue.
Thank you.
Mufassil Islam
Human Rights Advocate
To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: turkman@sbcglobal.net
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:18:08 -0700
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Torture on female student DU : Why HR , fenminist Irine , Maleka, s kamal C silent no
Sir,I went abroad for higher studies but all my cousins went to DU also and now their next generation is studying there. I'm sure Bangladesh would never become Pakistan but please tell me, why there's so much corruption if all are Pious Moslims?Why I write Muslim wrong or Moslim?Because no children in USA, U.K., Canada, New Zealand etc think it should be pronounced Muslim after they are told the correct pro-nunciation. They think, it should be written Moslim including my own children born and raised USA.If you insist you are right, please find me a word in English Dictionary were 'U' sounds like 'O' as 2nd letter, where 3rd letter is 'S' ...!There are only a few words, where 'U' sounds 'O' or 'OO' like Put, Pull, Bush, Push, Full, Bull etc. There are a lot words, we mis-pronounce in the Sub Continent replacing sound of full 'U' (yoo or you sound) with double 'O' wrongfully like in Dude, Rude, Stupid, Flute, Delute, etc.You see, nobody pronounces Musharraf right here because 'Mush' is a word and it has no sound of 'O' in it. The same is true with all names, where we have used 'U' for sound of 'O'. 'Mullaah' is pronounced without any sound of 'O' in it because 'Mull' is a word and it has no sound of 'O' in it. Where the hell you people are adding an 'H' in the end is a mystery to me because in Arabic this word has no 'H' in the end.Mullah is a word of Arabic that means Sail Boat Guy, not Mollaa. Since there's no word in English that starts with 'Qur' or in similar fashion, 'Quran' is being pronounced 'Qarane' here. without an 'O' sound. Write is Qoraan, and find them pronouncing it correctly all the time. Are we in to some kind of stupid game of making Westerners pronounce our words wrong, sir as an essential part of Islam?
If so, please provide me the qoutes proving your point in Qoraan or Hadith ...!]Otherwise, please tell me, why as a Moslim I have to keep being embarassed of stupid things like these in gatherings of English Language Ph. D's, being one of them?
mufassil islam <mufassili@hotmail.com> wrote:
Mr. Turkman:
I am sorry but your letters are in most of the times extremely confusing and entails some previous grudges which require explaining as you intend the letters to be read by many. You also do not respond to constructive and data based responses to your letters and your letters are in most of the times based on irrational generalisations. I am now confident and as I had mentioned in my last letter that most likely you are an Indian national as your repeated spellings of Moslim (sometimes Moslem) suggest. Can you explain the picture a bit further? As an ex-Dhaka University student and a lawyer I cannot jump to conclusions about any fanaticism like you alwasy do. I do not support Hindu destroying Babri msoque and the so called Indian secularist Government and the people who had voted VJP to power remaining silent about it and I also do not support any form of atrocity in the name of religious fundamentalism. Bangladeshis will never vote any fanatic power like in India or in Pakistan but we are pious Muslims. If the atrocities were committed, then a full investigation should follow and you are right the Advisor should act. Pls refrain from antagonising and aggravating issues with foregone conclusions. Freedom of speech should be exercised diligently.
Mufassil Islam
Human Rights Advocate
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From: turkman@sbcglobal.net
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:49:13 -0700
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Torture on female student DU : Why HR , fenminist Irine , Maleka, s kamal C silent now?
How can they say anything?All of them are Moslims and this is Islam in action in Dhaka University.
"Md. Aminul Islam" <aminul_islam_raj@yahoo. wrote:com> dear all,noticed it? All are silent?noon today in protest against repression on journalists.
.
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