aaj to besabab udaas hai jii
ishq hotaa to ko’ii baat bhii thii

Nasir Kazmi

apnii bekalii kaa sabab aaj tak
Khud bhii jaanaa nahiiN ke tujhse kaheN

Ahmed Faraz

A collaborative blog helped I co-found, Indian Muslims, has been nominated to the prestigious Brass Crescent Awards in the Best Group Blog category. Brass Crescent Awards are given out to the best of Muslim Blogosphere annually and are now in their fourth year of running. Here is what I wrote at Indian Muslims on this occasion:

Right from its inception we have projected Indian Muslims as a collaborative platform to share ideas and engage in constructive discussions. This nomination in the Best Group Blog category is a vindication of our policy. We were also the finalists at the 2006 Indibloggies for Best Group/Community Blog. Over the past 6 months, Indian Muslims has grown by leaps and bounds with record number of visitors per day and a substantial increase in the number of comments on posts. Also, new authors have joined Indian Muslims bringing fresh perspective with them. All this has contributed to the ‘group feel’ of this blog and we will continue building upon this in future. [Indian Muslims]

How To Vote?

The process of voting is simple. Please visit www.BrassCrescent.org and scroll down the page to the fifth section, BEST GROUP BLOG, and select your nominee. Then scroll the page down till the very end and enter your email address and click on the submit button. You would need to validate your vote through a link in the email received in your Inbox. If the email is not in your Inbox, please check your Junk/Bulk/Spam folder. The email will be coming from Brass Crescent Awards. Feel free to drop a comment here in case of any clarification.

It is possible to vote only for Best Group Blog category if you are not sure which blogs to choose in other categories.

A good friend and fellow blogger, Adnan, has been nominated for the Best South Asian Blog. Last date of voting is 14th December 2007.

Thanks a lot!

Albeit a bit late, here is wishing everyone a great Eid.

Last day of Ramadan with Imam Suhaib Webb.

Ramadan came, but Bairam is with us.
The lock came, but the key is with us.

Mouth is closed. Eyes are opened.
That brilliance that the eyes see is with us.

We have cleaned soul and heart with fasting.
The dirt which has been with us is cleansed now.

Some stress comes from fasting,
But the invisible treasure of heart is with us.

Ramadan came to the heart’s temple;
The one who created heart is with us.

Since Salahuddin* is among this crowd,
Mansur and Beyazid* are with us.

*Salahuddin: Rumi’s closest spiritual companion and disciple following
the final disappearance of Shams-e Tabriz, whom he put in charge of
the spiritual training of his disciples.

*Mansur and Beyazid: two famous Sufis of the past, Mansur al-Hallaj
and Beyazid Bestami.

– Ghazal No. 370 from the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi
Translated by Nevit Ergin
(from the Turkish translation of the original
Persian by Golpinarli)
“Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi: Divan-i Kebir,”
Volume 18, 2002.

Eid is around the corner. With it comes the dilemma: to celebrate or not to celebrate. It seems this year too, like previous years, Eid will be observed on different days by different mosques. The one I go to has already decided the Eid is on 13th October.

Meanwhile, there have been a couple of good articles at Indian Muslims on Eid. Mirza Faisal Beg reminds us of the beautiful story of Premchand called Idgah and Inam Abidi remembers a family friend on Eid.

A common charge leveled against Muslims is that they don’t condemn terror. Or at the very least, they don’t condemn enough. One ex-PM in India tried to justify the mass-murder of 2000+ innocents in Gujarat in 2002 on this very premise.

Ali Eteraz, provocateur par excellence, writes a good piece in Huffington Post on this issue.

The amount of disinformation about Muslims is disconcerting. One popular smear is that Muslims are in an alliance with the left to take over the West; it is an allegation that far right loves to use.

The other, equally popular and equally absurd, idea is that Muslims do not condemn terrorism. This too makes its way into culture from the right (though judging by comments to my last post, its diffused to some members of the left). Though it is subtler, and argues from insinuation, it is no less pernicious. The implication is that every Muslim in the world who doesn’t engage in terrorism is nevertheless a latent supporter, or enabler, of terrorism because he doesn’t make loud proclamations against it. [Huffington Post]

Mohd. Rafi singing Ramzan Ki Fazeelat. Reminds me of my hostel canteen during Ramadan in Aligarh.

Famous qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shamas Ud Doha, Badar Ud Doja.

I think I am a nice dinner guest. I remember a lot of witty anecdotes, have a decent sense of humor and am respectful to others point of view. Unless I am on a table full of Pakistanis.

So, I went to this birthday party thrown by my good friends, a couple actually, one of which is a Pakistani Canadian married to a Pakistani American. Obviously there were a lot of Pakistanis at the dinner and as luck would have it, I was the only Indian. One thing led to another and soon three of us were having a full-fledged argument in a fully crowded cafe. First of all, I am amazed at the absolute necessity of most Indians and Pakistanis to tell the other side how wrong they are. May be they just want an audience to get their message across. I agree that we have come a long way since the time my Indian class-mates kept asking if there was a punishment for rape in Pakistan and my Pakistani cousins wondering if there were mosques in India. That was during the time of Doordarshan and PTV. Thankfully we have moved beyond that. But not by much. Here is a sample from the long argument.

India is not really secular.
It is funny to hear it from a Pakistani whose country constitutionally discriminates on the basis of religion and a non-Muslim can’t be the head of state.
Yes, but it is an un-written rule in India that there will be no non-Hindu head of state.
We just had Kalam as our President.
Yes, but there will be no PM.
But we have a Sikh PM who is a non-Hindu. Then we have Sonia Gandhi who almost became the PM.
There will be no Muslim PM.
Do you know anyone who was capable and discriminated against?
And so on and so on.

A&F, I am sorry for ruining your birthday party, even though I was no more than a 33% culprit.