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In Varanasi, the temple of Shiva was substituted by a mosque during the reign of Aurangzeb. Despite objections from Muslim community, Nehru built a temple for the worshipers of Shiva on the other side of the wall. Both Hindu and Muslim communities observe are at peace there. Also in Jerusalem, the Muslims and Jews pray under the same roof, albeit in different areas. Religious bigots should learn to compromise and believe that the Universe is not only for their community. Insisting otherwise could only bring about their own annihilation.
In my locality, Durga-Puja has been regularly celebrated in the Church for more than 10 years. How come Church-goers are not complaining about it? Just think about how much confidence in their religion those Church-goers have to allow such a major week-long festivity of other religious community to go-on inside their Church. Mosque-goers, who are complaining about the sharing the same building with another religious group should learn from Christians in our locality. Just think about what would have been the reaction if they were asked to share the Mosque instead.
In fact, it's a very good idea to facilitate cross-community religious festivities in the same venue. This will broaden minds and improve religious tolerance.
Jiten Roy
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Re: মসজিদের ওপর ; তলায় মন্দি 80; স্থাপন নিয়&# 2503; উত্তেজনা
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2012, 8:35 PM
Many a time, my muslim friends have done their prayers in my residence. That did not make my house a mosque. In my opinion, both the temple and the mosque should be banned in the bar council building.
2012/8/3 Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
Mosque on the second floor. Obviously there are offices, stores, or residences on the third floor which is immediately above the mosque. Proposed temple to be on third floor. I don't see any problem! What is the opinion of the Islamic scholars? Lawyers themselves are entangled in a funny legal issue. As a matter of fact it is now much more than legal and potentially an explosive one. Hopefully it will be amicably settled. This kind of issues will go in favor of BNP-Jamaat politics. They will have the opportunity to tell the nation that because Awami rule the Hindus are showing such an audacity.
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Mr. Sudhir Kumar, I am glad that this center wants to promote open-minded intellectual deliberations about SanatanDharma. I have a proposal to all intellectuals in this center, and that is – how about promoting 'Formless-worshipping (Nirakar Upashana)' to revive the spiritual understanding of the essence of religion through yoga, meditation, etc., since SanatonDharma has a provision for that already, and does not require idolatry for religious purposes. Idolatry is merely a ritualistic act to commemorate a particular memorable scriptural event, and as such - it is much more a cultural festivity than a religious act. Idolatry breeds superstitions and prejudices; it divides community into sects and castes. It should be separated from the core religion ASAP. In my view, SanatonDharma, as it exists today, is 80% idolatry and 20% spiritual. Could this trend be reversed through mass education? Thank you so much. Jiten Roy
|
In my locality, Durga-Puja has been regularly celebrated in the Church for more than 10 years. How come Church-goers are not complaining about it? Just think about how much confidence in their religion those Church-goers have to allow such a major week-long festivity of other religious community to go-on inside their Church. Mosque-goers, who are complaining about the sharing the same building with another religious group should learn from Christians in our locality. Just think about what would have been the reaction if they were asked to share the Mosque instead. In fact, it's a very good idea to facilitate cross-community religious festivities in the same venue. This will broaden minds and improve religious tolerance. Jiten Roy --- On Thu, 8/2/12, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
|
There are two alternatives to do. One is to go to war with the offending countries and get decimated, and the other is to find out what in Islam makes it's followers offensive to people all over the world and eliminate it.
So what is the "Proper" thing to do. Watch innocent civilians slaughter and eat panta bhat?
Shalom!
-----Original Message-----
From: BHBCUC USA <unitycouncilusa@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Jul 29, 2012 5:20 am
Subject: [mukto-mona] Fwd: [chottala.com] Islamic militants take aim at Myanmar
Islamic militants take aim at Myanmar
By Jacob Zenn
After decades of isolation under military rule, Myanmar is opening to foreign investment and forms of democracy for the first time in a generation. The reform process, however, is now being attended by unanticipated consequences and influences, both internally and from abroad, that could undermine the country's new trend towards openness.
Recent sectarian fighting between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar's western Rakhine State has caught the attention of militant Islamists in South and Southeast Asia. Since May, the amount of jihadi propaganda directed towards Myanmar, a country previously unknown in the world of jihadi antagonists, has surged as perhaps thousands of Muslim Rohingyas have been forced to flee the country.
Tensions between the ethnic Rohingya and Rakhine populations in Rakhine State were mostly kept under wraps under Myanmar's previous ruling military junta. Violence erupted on May 28 after an ethnic Rakhine woman was raped and murdered allegedly by three Rohingyas in Rakhine State, and the government was unprepared for the inter-ethnic violence that soon transpired.
A cycle of violence between the two groups has since resulted in widespread arson attacks and hundreds of murders. Perhaps thousands of the 800,000 Rohingyas living in Rakhine State have recently fled to Bangladesh, which many Myanmar citizens claim is the Rohingyas' true homeland.
The violence occurs at a time of growing regional instability in the pivot area where South and Southeast Asia meet, namely the areas along the Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India's Assamese borders. At the same that Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines clashed in Myanmar, fighting erupted between Muslims and Hindus in India's Assam State.
Since mid-July, more than 30 people have been killed and 150,000 displaced in Assam as riots devolved into open conflict between indigenous tribes such as the Bodos and Muslim settlers in the state's Kokrajhar and Chirang districts. As in Myanmar where the Rohingyas are considered illegal Bangladeshi settlers, the Muslims targeted in Assam are accused of being ethnic Bengalis from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has the highest population density of any country and is woefully ill-equipped to deal with an influx of refugees from Myanmar and India. Bangladesh is home to a population of 160 million people in a country the size of the US State of Iowa, which in contrast has a population of only three million people.
Bangladesh also has its own homegrown problems with Muslim extremist groups, including the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which authorities banned in 2009. The head of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), Yasin Bhatkal, is believed to be hiding in Dhaka and Chittagong, Bangladesh's two largest cities, allegedly with the help of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
The Bangladesh government now runs the risk of being perceived by militant Islamists as selling out fellow Muslims, a sentiment expressed in a recent surge of jihadi propaganda condemning it for not doing enough to help the inrush of refugee Rohingyas.
As is often the case with jihadi statements, the videos and essays propagated by militant Islamists about recent events in Myanmar are more rhetoric than substance. Playing up the victimhood narrative, they apparently hope to incite the global Muslim community, or ummah, and win new recruits to their wider cause against enemy "infidel" governments and countries.
While secular Bangladesh has been a target of Islamists for years, Myanmar is apparently a new member of the "infidel" club of countries that propagandists threaten in response to its treatment of the Rohingyas. Given the Myanmar military's ongoing challenges of trying to pacify internal insurgencies, including a major unresolved conflict in northern Kachin State, it is likely unprepared to raise its counter-terrorism capabilities to prevent a possible retributive plot against the country.
The most recent militant statement to target Myanmar came from Lebanon's Hezbollah, which on July 23 said in an official statement:"The regime-owned killing machine relentlessly works on striking Muslims in different regions, with Rohingya at the forefront...This is a new racial purification trend against Muslims."On July 20, the Taliban released a more vitriolic statement saying:The Muslims of [Myanmar] have been facing such oppression and savagery for the past two months never previously witnessed in the history of mankind.On July 16, The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), the European propaganda arm in support of al Qadea and other radical Islamic organizations, issued a recent question and answer essay called "The Genocide against the Muslims in [Myanmar]" on the jihadist website al Fidaa:
Mercilessly burning children, women and men like toasting sheep on fire is not only against every known law but something no man with any conscious can ever accept but unfortunately the Muslims of [Myanmar] are targets of such a gross crime. Not only that, but they are also being expelled from their lands, forcefully ejected from their homes, their wealth is being usurped and their honor looted while the whole world turns a blind eye to their plight.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, besides considering this crime a black scar on the history of mankind, calls on the government of [Myanmar] to immediately put a stop to this savagery and barbarism and halt such heart rending historical violations against humans and humanity. They should realize that this is not only a crime against the Muslims of [Myanmar] but against all humankind and especially an unforgivable crime against the entire Muslim world…[1]Why did this genocide begin? The Buddhist Rakhine killers placed the dead body [of the raped and killed Rakhine woman] near a Muslim village without any knowledge of the murder. The Buddhist Rakhine and Burmese (Myanmar) authority accused Muslims of killing the woman. As a result, three innocent Muslim youths were arrested. One was beaten to death, and the other two were sentenced to death by the court. The government has shown the world that they created a fake issue to instigate a real event against Muslims.These messages and interpretations of events are starting to cause regional ripple effects. On July 13, 300 members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT) in Indonesia threatened to storm the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. One protest leader said over a loudspeaker: "If embassy officials refuse to talk with us, I demand all of you break into the building and turn it upside down … Allahu Akbar … Every drop of blood that is shed from a Muslim must be paid back. Nothing is free in this world … FPI is ready to wage jihad … Go to Myanmar and carry out jihad for your Muslim brothers."
How did this genocide start and what happened afterwards? On June 3, 2012, eight Muslim pilgrims along with one escort, one bus helper, and one woman were killed by a Rakhine mob in Taungup township in southern Arakan [Rakhine] State. Five others escaped the massacre…The gang of Rakhine terrorists stopped the bus, which had the license plate 7 (Ga) 7868, at an immigration gate, and called, "Come down all, if there are any foreigners," while holding lethal weapons…Then, they started to beat the Muslim pilgrims and dragged them from the bus to the road, where an organized gang of more than 300 Rakhine terrorists beat the Muslims until they died. The gang had been standing at the immigration gate, but no authorities came out to stop the massacre. [2]
On July 6, the al-Faruq Foundation for Media Production released an Arabic-language video called "Solidarity With Our Muslim Brothers in Arakan (The Tragedy of [Myanmar])" on the Ansar al-Mujahideen Forum. The propaganda film includes a historical narrative focusing on Muslim victimhood played over images of brutalized Rohingyas, although some of the images appear not to have come from the recent violence. The video's narrative includes a passage that says:They steal the money of the Muslims and they steal their crops and they prohibit the Muslims from communicating with people from other countries. They also prevent the marriages of Muslims and they put a lot of obstacles in the way of Muslim marriages. This is not all as there is a lot of injustice that you can't even imagine and all forms of torture. So where are the defenders of the human rights in the 20th century and where the people who fight for freedom and democracy. This awful silence indicates the acceptance and supporting of this because it is Muslim blood that is being shed and since it is a Muslim blood, then the blood is cheap like the blood of Muslims of 'Arakan', Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya and everywhere else.These and other statements have put the Rohingyas' plight on the radar of many Islamist militant groups. While their propaganda is directed at militants from all regions, some of the groups who have issued statements on Myanmar are clearly trying to recruit disenfranchised Rohingyas to their radical causes.
They have a potential galvanizing figure. One ethnic Rohingya, Abu Zar al-Burmi, is believed to be the mufti, or religious scholar, for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Without roots in any nation, as Rohingyas are not allowed citizenship in Myanmar or Bangladesh, al-Burmi has promoted the creation of a global Muslim community which exists without respect to international borders.
The growing inter-religious fighting and spillover humanitarian crises in Rakhine and Assam States is exerting new pressures on Bangladesh, Myanmar, and India. As the violence spirals and governments fail to restore order and dispense of justice for crimes committed, the situation could quickly become a new regional, if not international, security dilemma.
For their part, Islamist militants have shown they are prepared to exploit the plight of the Rohingyas for their own radical purposes, while neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh have demonstrated they are able to manage the crisis at a local or national level. Should the crisis escalate and become an effective recruiting tool for transnational Islamist militant groups, the international community will one way or another eventually be dragged into the mire.
Notes:
1. Statement of Islamic Emirate regarding the bloody tragedy of the Muslims of Burma, July 20, 2012.
2. The Genocide Against the Muslims in Burma, Jihadology, July 16, 2012.
3. Solidarity With Our Muslim Brothers in Arakan (The Tragedy of Burma), Jihadology, July 6, 2012.
Jacob Zenn is a political risk analyst and legal adviser based in Washington, D.C., who focuses on militant groups in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Nigeria. He can be reached at zopensource123@gmail.com.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NG27Ae04.html
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-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
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Mosque on the second floor. Obviously there are offices, stores, or residences on the third floor which is immediately above the mosque. Proposed temple to be on third floor. I don't see any problem! What is the opinion of the Islamic scholars? Lawyers themselves are entangled in a funny legal issue. As a matter of fact it is now much more than legal and potentially an explosive one. Hopefully it will be amicably settled. This kind of issues will go in favor of BNP-Jamaat politics. They will have the opportunity to tell the nation that because Awami rule the Hindus are showing such an audacity.
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মসজিদের ওপর তলায় মন্দির স্থাপন নিয়ে উত্তেজনা
Thu 2 Aug 2012 8:26 PM BdST খুলনা, ২ আগস্ট (রিয়েল-টাইম নিউজ ডটকম)-- খুলনা জেলা আইনজীবী সমিতি ভবনের দ্বিতীয় তলায় অবস্থিত মসজিদের সরাসরি ওপরে চতুর্থ তলায় মন্দির স্থাপনের উদ্যোগ নেয়ায় আইনজীবীদের মধ্যে উত্তেজনা বিরাজ করছে।
এ উদ্যোগ বাতিলের দাবিতে সাধারণ আইনজীবীরা গণস্বাক্ষর সংগ্রহ অভিযান শুরু করেছে। এনিয়ে যেকোনো মুহূর্তে অপ্রীতিকর ঘটনার আশঙ্কা করা হচ্ছে।
আইনজীবীরা জানান, ২০০৯ সালে আইনজীবী সমিতির ভবনের দ্বিতীয় তলায় নামাজের জন্য একটি কক্ষ নির্দিষ্ট করে মসজিদ ঘোষণা করা হয়। সেখানে নিয়মিতভাবে নামাজ আদায় করা হয়।
এরপর থেকে আইনজীবী সমিতির হিন্দু সদস্যরা তাদের পূজার জন্য একটি কক্ষ বরাদ্দের দাবি জানিয়ে আসছেন। বাংলাদেশের কোনো আইনজীবী সমিতি ভবনে এ ধরনের কোনো মন্দিরের ব্যবস্থা নেই।
কিন্তু, খুলনা জেলা আইনজীবী সমিতিতে এমন উদ্যোগ নেয়ায় সাধারণ আইনজীবীদের মধ্যে প্রতিক্রিয়া দেখা দিয়েছে। তারা ইতোমধ্যে মসজিদের ওপর মন্দির স্থাপনের এই উদ্যোগ বন্ধে গণস্বাক্ষর অভিযান শুরু করেছে।
আইনজীবী সমিতির নির্বাহী কমিটির একজন প্রভাবশালী সদস্য জানান, দেশের কোনো বারেই মন্দির নেই। এখানে করার দাবি জানানো হচ্ছে। বর্তমান সভাপতি সাধারণ সদস্যদের মতামত উপেক্ষা করে দাবি মেনে নেয়ায় আইনজীবীদের মধ্যে ক্ষোভের সঞ্চার হয়েছে।
সমিতির সাবেক সভাপতি শেখ আবদুল আজিজ জানান, '২০০৭ সালে করিডোরে মসজিদের সূচনা হলেও ২০০৯ সালে সেটিকে পরিপূর্ণ মসজিদে রূপান্তর করা হয়। আমার জানা মতে- বিশ্বের কোথাও মসজিদের ওপরে মন্দির নেই। কিন্তু বর্তমান কমিটি কিভাবে এ ধরনের সিদ্ধান্ত নিতে যাচ্ছে তা আমার বোধগম্য নয়।'
সমিতির সাবেক সভাপতি ও বার কাউন্সিলের সদস্য এমএম মুজিবর রহমান জানান, বিষয়টি খুবই স্পর্শকাতর। তাই আইনজীবী সমিতির সংখ্যাগরিষ্ঠ সদস্যের মতামতের ভিত্তিতে সিদ্ধান্ত নেয়া উচিত।
সমিতির সাধারণ সম্পাদক সরদার আনিসুর রহমান পপলু জানান, বারের সদস্যদের মতামতের বাইরে কোনো কিছুই করা হবে না।
সমিতির সভাপতি পারভেজ আলম খানের সাথে এব্যাপারে কথা বলতে চাইলে তিনি বলেন, 'আমার কাছে এসব জিজ্ঞেস করেন?' এরপর 'রাখেন মিয়া' বলে তিনি লাইন কেটে দেন।
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