Apparently, Sayeeda Warsi thinks ‘doing God’ means attacking the poor, needy, and marginalised in favour of the rich and privileged.
Moron.
Tagged: inequality Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
thabet
-
thabet
-
thabet
Some links on Kyrgyzstan I’ve been reading:
- Kyrgyzstan: Hundreds Dead
- The Killings in Osh, Kyrgyzstan are Stalin’s Legacy
- Terrible News From Osh
- Why Didn’t We See It Coming?
- Info Wrangling on Kyrgyzstan Continues
- Why Kyrgyzstan’s pogroms are my fault (and yours, Britain’s and America’s)
- Kyrgyzstan – even Russia and China don’t seem to care
- Kyrgyzstan: the absence of mercy
- Why are Kyrgyzstan’s slum dwellers so angry?
- Breaking point: why the Kyrgyz lost their patience
- Kyrgyzstan’s angel of death
- Why isn’t anyone taking Kyrgyzstan’s calls?
I also found Eurasianet’s Kyrgyzstan archive and RFE/RL (search their archives) very useful.
-
johnpi
It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong. Sufism and Wahhabism, in fact, share a fatal characteristic – they are religions of the status quo. In Pakistan, Sufism legitimises barbarities of inequality and starvation – ‘do nothing, it’s god’s will’ – while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Contemporary Sufism, rather than being a solution to Pakistan’s problems, is the cause.
-
aziz
-
cbarwa
Sufism legitimises barbarities of inequality and starvation – ‘do nothing, it’s god’s will’ – while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.
John – am I to understand that you agree with this critique?, it seems like ‘an opium of the masses’ arguement to me and I am not convinced that it is entirely fair to the legacy of Sufism in South Asia.
-
johnpi
I haven’t decided what about this article I’m in agreement with yet…
-
-
Shams al-Nahar
Those people are Sufi in the same sense that WECs are christians.
They represent a socio-political pseudo-religious aggregate that seeks to maintain the status quo and the local primacy of their memetic deme.-
johnpi
I think you nailed it.
-
-
Durkadurkistan
Interesting. I’d probably disagree with the author’s insistence that Sufism is the problem here, though. It looks as like sufism has just been coopted by a sort of feudalistic economic/political order. But there were valid points about some of the excesses, cults of personality and superstitions that can go along with sufism.
Have you heard of this Shaykh from Lahore – Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri?
“A Message to the Sufis” by Sh. Tahir-ul-Qadri:
-
thabet
MuQ are not beyond using thuggery and violence against people who may question their shaykh.
-
Durkadurkistan
Do you mean that Minhaj-ul-Qur’an as an organization encourages the behavior, or that some of the Shaykh’s many followers are simply fools?
I’d opine it is the latter.
-
-
-
Willow
This is so specific to the subcontinent that I’m surprised the author felt at liberty to extract such sweeping generalizations. The ‘pir’ system is unknown in the Middle East and Africa. And while I am critical of Sufi organization–I think it does inherently foster cultlike behavior–this is certainly an extreme.
-
-
johnpi
For the first time in Lebanon, a woman has been allowed to open a bank account.
The change in banking policy that now allows women to open accounts comes after an advocacy campaign led by the Institute of Progressive Women and other groups.
-
manas
What a weird policy! Why would they have such a thing in place?
-
thabet
Preventing women owning their own property, wealth, etc. is a means of control.
-
-
abunoor
The reporting on this story is confusing, but I believe that most of the headlines are misleading. It is not that women were not allowed to open bank accounts before now, but women were not allowed to establish bank accounts for their children before, only the fathers were allowed to do so.
Does anyone know more details.
I fear the misleading headline is leading to promotion of misleading stereotypes about the position of women in the Muslim world rather than actually drawing attention to the real issues of discrimination and status of women.
For example, the Lebanese Minister of Finance is a woman.
-
-
thabet
Perhaps following the advice of Rowan Williams, HSBC’s chairman says banks should apologise to everyone in the world:
The entire banking industry “owes the real world an apology”, the chairman of HSBC has said.
Stephen Green told BBC World Business Report that a change in culture was needed to improve the public’s perception of bankers.
Williams is right when he was reported to have warned that the “gap between rich and poor would lead to an increasingly “dysfunctional” society”, but I think he needs to go a step beyond simply capping this or that bonus and consider the structures and relationships which generate such a gap (I am sure Williams, a highly intelligent man, if not very media aware, is smart enough to realise this).
-
abunoor
Apologies are all well and good, but the banks should make taubah and stop engaging in riba, i.e. war against Almighty God.
-
thabet
I think it goes beyond simply labelling a practice riba and prohibiting it, or finding a way around it given the dominance of capitalism. This is what appears to happen at present in Islamic finance. I am referring to some of our contemporary fundamental economic relationships, which are quite exploitative or lend themselves to exploitation.
-
-
-
thabet
Yahya has an article on why it is important to retain a level-head in response to far right, just as it is in response to religious fanaticism amongst Muslims:
-
thabet
This is the party which was formed to “represent the interests and needs of the urban proletariat”:
-
thabet
Too bad Hamza Alavi isn’t around anymore.
Still, at least there are some who note the role of Pakistani elites, busy waffling about ‘Sufi Islam’, in its current problems. Consider this interview with a Pakistan Taliban leader in Swat:
-
thabet
The evidence for why economic inequality isn’t good for people and their societies.
thabet, and 4 others are discussing. 
abunoor, 
well, “a” cause, not “the” cause, surely.