Eight Lessons in 27 years

As I am slowly moving towards the end of a journey (you may probably learn in next post - what's this journey), I would like to list down the important lessons that I learnt(learning) in my life through various incidents, experiences, sources, art, literature, philosophies, mysticism, psychology, science, abstractness, falsehood, deception, grief, hunger, illness, patriotism, rebellion, wealth, temptations, pride, arrogance, envy, ignorance, power, fear, culture, language, parents and my extended human, animal and plant families .. here's an attempt to paint them with images and quotes for you to reflect and agree or disagree ..
 
1. On Existence (On Ego & Soul)

“I can't believe, I'm simply not existing because it doesn't seem true, and I would just be lying to myself.“

"My soul is my guide, for my soul is of that abode

I will not speak of the earthly, I am of the unknown."

"I did not come here on my own accord, nor will I thus leave. 

He who brought me here, shall return me to my very own."

"The sun itself is proof the sun exists!

Seek your proofs, but don't turn your face from it."
 
"Do not ask, Where is God?
Rather ask, Where am I?"

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there."

"I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God's."

2. On Knowledge (On Intuition & Intellect)

“Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave”

"Given that true reality (haqiqat) is obscured by forms and appearances, as we have seen, an epistemological question is inevitable: how reliable are intellect and logic as a means of discovering and knowing the real? Can we humans reach certainty about our knowledge and our beliefs? "
 
"Knowledge that is acquired
is not like this.
Those who have it worry if
audiences like it or not.
It's a bait for popularity.
Disputational knowing wants customers.
It has no soul.

The only real customer is God.
Chew quietly
your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay
playfully childish.”

"Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune:
every success depends upon focusing the heart.Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,
wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?"

3. On Mistakes (On Lessons & Wisdom)

"Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from."

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."

“Come follow me and you will find the way.
Your mistakes can also lead you to the Truth.
When you ask, the answer will be given.”

"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue - so, the most important lessons lay not in what I needed to learn, but in what I first needed to unlearn."

"Who are the learned? Those who practice what they know."

4. On Evil (On Choice & Consequences)

"We stopped checking for monsters under our bed and we realized they were inside of us?"

"The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself."

"Thou does not know evil till thou knowst good: (only) from (one) contrary is it possible to discern (the other) contrary, 0 youth!"

"All evil qualities—oppression, hatred, envy, greed, mercilessness, pride—when they are within yourself, they bring no pain. When you see them in another, then you shy away and feel the pain."

"God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one."

“…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. "


5. On Love (On Need & Greed)

"One should not confuse true love with the feeling felt for members of the opposite sex. Such love, although sometimes transformed into true love, is deficient, temporary, and has no inherent value unless he desireth for his neighbour that which he desireth for himself."

"And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it
would not fill this emptiness(greed)."

"You know what love is?
It is all kindness, generosity.
Disharmony prevails when
You confuse lust with love, while
The distance between the two
Is endless."

"The lover’s ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries."


6. On Struggle (On Purpose & Goals) 

"The angel is saved by knowledge, The beast by brute ignorance;
Midway between and struggling Such a predicament is man's!"

“Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.”

"The intelligent desire self-control;
children want candy."

"Speak truth, even in the face of a tyrant."

"The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self."


7. On Freedom (On Oppression & Responsibility)

"Knowing your enemy is winning half the battle"

"It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence."

"Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change."

"The undisciplined person doesn’t wrong himself alone–
but sets fire to the whole world."

"Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us."

"Lawless are they that make their wills their law."

"If you do not feel ashamed of anything, then you can do whatever your desires want."


8. On Submission (On Liberation & Peace)

"The worldly comforts are not for me. I am like a traveler, who takes a rest under a tree in the shade and then goes on his way."

"Let God be the ruler over your hearts, not the duniya (world)"
 
"Do you want to enter paradise?
To walk the path of Truth
You need the grace of God.
We all face death in the end.
But on the way, be careful
Never to hurt a human heart!"

"People who attach their identity & happiness to things of the material, who are happy when their relationship is going good, or when their work is going good, or when their financial status is good, they will be among the losers. A submitter's happiness is attached to Divine. And the Divine is eternal, That is why a submitter always says 'I seek refuge in God' to whatever good or bad things that happen to them"

"Forgiveness is a creative act, a true gift, that changes us from prisoners of the past to liberated people at peace with our memories"

"True devotion is for itself:
not to desire heaven nor to fear hell."




~ "All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the worlds."

10 years of smoking towers

"On September 11th our lives changed forever. We witnessed an act of aggression that in many ways does not have a parallel in past or present times. There are several elements that make this act unique, from the use of civilian planes as weapons of mass destruction to the attack on the most widely recognised skyscrapers in the world. Nor have we ever witnessed the terrible indictment of Islam as having a part to play in such a heinous crime .. "
~ Sheikh Hamza Yusuf 

I was in my living room, preparing for my school-exams, as I heard footsteps descending down the stairs rapidly, it was my neighbor's son - a student of 6th grade. There was something unusual with his tone, and he gasped and gave a direct command of some sort - "switch on the television!". 

The immediate thought was, probably some cricket match was on as this fella was an ardent sports fan.
I lazily moved and turned on the tube to receive a frame of smoke among the skyscrapers - the skyline looked familiar, I assumed - an earthquake probably, or was it some kind of air-crash accident .. two minutes into the content of the tube, a flash scrolled by - 'Terrorists attack on Twin-towers, estimated death-toll in hundreds'. Scores of questions fired in my brain, but apparently I wasn't thinking, it was like a mixed-mashedup-mind experiencing shock & confusion. I was in my high-school when it happened, what went down in history as the 9-11 attacks.

The next day the news focussed on the tragic events with an unbelieveable content,"Muslims are seen rejoicing in some parts of the world". This gave me a jolt much heavier than the tragedy itself. The thought in my mind was the people who died in the attacks are civilians - people with dreams, people like me - children, women, old-men and people living normal life.

In folowing days my imagination went too far when I assumed Muslims not to celebrate even their birthdays and anniversaries, if it fell on September 11^th. “We can’t have Muslims walking into bakeries and ordering cakes with big smiles on their faces or exchanging roses on this day shouting ‘Happy Anniversary!’ at restaurants,” explained my turbid-brain, “It would be highly suspicious and inhuman if Muslims appeared even remotely happy or laugh on this day and, as international citizens, I implore Muslims to appear sad on this day.”
And after all these turbidity it took me almost half-a-decade to learn that the media bias, mis-information and subtle-propaganda could hard-wire a normal human to associate two entirely different things and yet would convince himself/herself that they are one and the same. This idea sedimented so much into a average human that if "black" meant "color", then "Islam" meant "terrorism".

With so much confusion over 5 years, slowly made me drift into the world of agnosticism(ridiculous enough to be influenced by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris), religion & belief became just tags for me, nothing more than a cultural stamping upon my identity, and this view-point grew upon me for over 5+ years and it was partly due to the following facts

1. I was ignorant of what my original faith represented or spoke about.
2. I believed whatever the Television suggested to be undeniable realities.

I was fortunate among many Muslims, who were also taken for a ride after such an event, during my agnosticism phase I was destined to meet and befriend a fellow Muslim - who took his faith seriously. What followed were series of conversations, and a period of enlightenment for my 'nafs'
I learnt that unfortunately, much of the world does not know what almost every Muslim who has studied Islam knows; that the worst enemies of Islam are from within. The worst of these are the khawaarij who delude others by the deeply dyed religious exterior that they project.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said about them, “When you see them pray you will consider your own prayers insignificant. They recite the Quran but it does not exceed the limits of their throat.”  In other words, they don’t understand the wisdom & true meanings. The outward religious appearance and character of the khawaarij deluded thousands in the past, and continues to delude people today. Every Common-Muslim should therefore be aware that despite the khawaarij adherence to certain aspects of Islam, they are extremists of the worst type. As Dr.Lang suggests,"Islam has the best religion and probably the worst believers"

The Prophet said, peace be upon him, “Beware of extremism in your religion.” 
Islam is the middle way between excess and neglect. Zealots are a plague upon religion. These extremists roughly come in two types.
The first group is a reactionary extremist who falls far right of a centre-point. Reactionary extremists do not want any pluralism; they view the world in melodramatic, black and white, good and evil terms. They are good and anyone who opposes them is evil. From among the Muslims these are people who ‘excommunicate’ any Muslim who fails to share their interpretations of the Quran. They are used often by the Western media in order to scare simple people and cause them to believe that Muslims are insane and barbaric. Unfortunately, some Muslim individuals and communities provide them with much fuel to fire their incendiary flames.

The second group are radical extremists, who while they are almost identical with the former group, differ in that they will use violence to further their cause. They are actually more dangerous & worse than the first. They believe like every nefarious secret society before them that ‘the end justifies the means.’ They see any act as acceptable if it will further their ‘cause.’ This is blatantly anti-Islamic for a number of reasons.
Then came the wave of conspiracy theories. These were not limited to the Islamic world - infact much of these theories are rooted with the individuals living in America and were actively voicing such diverging interpretations(propagated by people like Alex Jones, and scores of other such people) and, year by year they were becoming increasingly prevalent among Muslim communities, and some theory-makers went as far as claiming the the world is run by 'green aliens' in White-House, and many paranoid common-Muslims were sucked into these games and some of these paranoid-Muslims went to trigger their own 'X-Files type' interpretation of 'End Times Map', and it grew so popular that it forced few Muslim Scholars to study the series and provide their refutations.

The 9-11 incident though tragic became a poster-advertisemt for Islamophobia, there were series of events that triggered the  divide of 'Islam and West' - almost all the major geo-political events and incidents over the decade that followed, subtly-mapped into a Muslim-mind as suppression of Islam, and steadily becoming a victim of injustice: War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq, Cartoons Controversy, Minaret Ban, Adhan Ban, Niqab ban, Flotila incident, Abu Garib, Civilian Deaths, Depleted Uranium, Psycho-Soldiers, more Psychos, Ariel Sharon Incident, Gujarat riots, Quran burning, Profiling at Airports (the ex-President of India was also a target), and such.

As every coin has two-faces, on the flip-side 9-11 incidents also tried to balance the Muslim-minds by giving them an opportunity to bridge the gaps, prejudices and misconceptions - Scholars, Intellectuals and Common-men alike came forward to the break the stereotypes, and therefore it led to a domino-effect of different kind: Rejection of extremism by scholors, condemnation of the 911 incident, and as bridges were built it surprisingly led to growth of Islam in the West, and more surprisingly among western-women. 

This was followed by waves of Young Muslims coming forward to dismantle the "Angry-Muslim" caricature built by news-media and popular-movies , and helped by young generation of scholars, converts, and preachers like: Hamza Yusuf, Nouman Ali Khan, Ali Ardekani, Idris Tawfiq, Jeffrey Lang, Eddie, Hamza Tzortzis, Adam Deen, Suhaib Webb, Peter Casey, Rageh Omaar and such, were also balanced by wisdom and patience through a number of experienced Muslims in similar/same fields.

Thanks to technology and internet - forums like social-networking sites, campaigns and discussion-rooms opened up possibilites for Muslims to express themselves - and suddenly these initiatives were complemented with popular Muslims coming to spotlight: Muslim Comedians, Oscar-winners, Pop-stars, Journalists, Peaceful-Revolutionaries(aka Twitter revolutionaries), Athletes, and even Muslim animals, mountains, and planets coming into visiblity on the world-stage, and the biggest of them we nearly had a Muslim President in White-House!:)
Though the final one was a disappointment.. yet, we had Tony Blair's sister-in-law, Lauren Booth choosing Islam, and Islam is now counted to be growing popular among Russians, South Americans, Australian-Aborigines and Chinese based on many independent yet, converging reports.

Well, what does all these little details & unrelated things about demographics, statistics and projections have to say to me? - personally, I have learnt that: Islam is not a blind and barbaric faith defined by a minute fraction of violent individuals, neither is the Prophet, peace be upon him, a liar nor a mad-man, and logically could not be both - as many individuals like Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, Alisina, Sam Shamoun, Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, and Terry Jones (loosely put the neocons) would say, and also work hard to propagate the idea openly/sublimally that 'Islam is of the evil'.
This post is kind of a 'thank you note' to my fellow Muslim friend who guided me out of agnosticism - by engaging me in discussions and how... reason, rationality, spirituality, science, God and religion are not conflicting spheres, and also thanking Dr.Lang for his wonderful book 'Struggling to surrender',that helped to open up my heart for Islam to enter again.
And by some coincidence about 2 years ago, I was introduced to an amazing bunch of individuals under a forum on facebook - who in my opinion are the 'centre of wisdom' on facebook, though not a strictly theistic forum -  it definitely is an oasis in 'desert of materialism',and I came to know there are plans for launching a web-page based on the group's discussions, posts and paradigms (would share the link here once the project is online).

Coming back to this blog-post, it wasn't all good though - we had Israel & Iran getting locked into an escalating battle of ego, and Iran's envious neighbor Saudi approving Israel's use of their Air-space for possible air-raids on Iran. Afghan tribal Muslim cutting off his wife's nose, Female circumcision among some Muslim in North Africa, Sectarian conflicts in Pakistan, Apostacy arrests, Rebel uprisings and attacks on NATO+US in Afghanistan & Iraq, the usual EDL vs Muslims clashes, Islamophobia still evident in Europe & USA, Dawkins gang suggesting that Muslims are delusional-beings, and Subramanian Swami suggesting to revoke voting rights of all Indian Muslims and more..  - but I'm happy emphasising the positives, things like these (link) and these (link) that there have been efforts by people from both camps to reach out to common-terms, be compassionate and most importantly be Insaan(human). 

(P.S: Only those individuals who are striving to live by the spirit of Islam as a 'way of life' are referenced as the popular Muslims above. Hence the list didn't include the likes of Kasab, Salman Rushdie, Lockerbie/Underwear bombers, and such - on expected lines weren't advertised)

~ “Knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual.”
― Imam Al-Ghazali

Consensus

Consensus. It seems to have a magic of its own, but even if we don't discuss that right now, the minimum that humanity needs today, especially in today's divided world for its survival, is that everyone should be willing to modify their views in order to accomodate others'.

We might be amazed to see that none of the so-called progressive ideologies and so-called perfect democracies have this on their agenda. They have created myths of "commitment", "conviction", etc, all nice words to hide the fact that no political party, ideology or "ism" today is willing to say, "I may be wrong as well, and I will know this from your response."

This is what we need to change. What do u think?

~ “Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth”

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm-X)

"I want you to watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man in his press, is going to identify me with "hate." He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol of "hatred"—and that will help him to escape facing the truth."
— The Autobiography of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka "Malcolm X")


Since his assassination, Malcolm X's legacy has waned and his ideas have made few inroads into mainstream discourse. He is, at best, a marginal historical figure. He is rarely seen except as a t-shirt or a poster, scarcely quoted and generally perceived as a black supremacist hatemonger who got what was coming to him. He certainly remains "radioactive" in the political sphere.

Despite this lingering perception of Malcolm X as a kind of black Hitler, the reality -- easily verified by historical speeches and interviews -- is that Malcolm X was an extremely intelligent, highly logical and rational man who understood and articulated the reality of being black in America as nobody had ever done before. At the height of his influence he was not only one of the most respected black leaders in America, but he was also beginning to wield enormous influence across the entire planet. He was an honored guest wherever he traveled in Africa and the Middle East. An autodidact who educated himself in prison, he was a keen student of history and as accomplished as any orator of the 20th century. He had an accurate understanding of the global nature of the racial problems facing America and had a plan about what to do about it. His domestic pairing with Martin Luther King is now undeniable. However, that move shocked and disturbed the U.S. intelligence community to its core, and was seen by FBI as the single biggest threat to the national security of the United States.

He had left his nationalism behind and became an internationalist. He changed the very nature of the civil rights debate by globalizing it. Rather than discuss the problems of black people in America as an issue of civil rights, he labeled it a struggle for human rights that could be taken to the United Nations. In hindsight, it's difficult to deny that he made a substantial contribution to the political, social, religious and moral discourse of how we treat each other as human beings both in the United States and across the planet. He understood that the United States was not immune to international pressure and he intended to bring that pressure to bear in order to address the racial problems the country faced. Malcolm X's charges against the United States at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the human rights of black people, essentially comparing it to South Africa and charging it with having its own system of apartheid under the name of second-class citizenship.


In a little over a decade, he went from just another prisoner to one of the most respected leaders on the world stage (and a neo-religious movement by name NOI presented him a perfect platform). His transformation was astonishing by any standard. Had his message been simply the pseudo-Islamic, quasi-mystic, black nationalism of Elijah Muhammad(founder of NOI), it's unlikely anybody would have ever heard of Malcolm X or the Nation of Islam. But his appeal to the masses of people was undeniably real. Amidst the language of peace, love, harmony and non-violence, Malcolm X spoke clearly, directly and with an uncompromising voice to articulate what the vast majority of black people were really thinking: the promises of future justice and future equality was small comfort compared to the daily reality of lynchings, murder, rapes, beatings, fire-hoses, police dogs, Jim Crow, disenfranchisement and a history that had been stolen 400 years ago. After 400 years of slavery, the white man had no moral right to ask the black man to wait any longer to enjoy the rights and freedoms upon which America prided itself. It denied black Americans equal rights even as it called on them again and again to fight and die abroad in the very name of those rights that they could not enjoy at home. Forty years later, his arguments still carry tremendous weight and yet for the most part, they remain too brutally honest to be faced directly by the public society of 2010. That brutal honesty is one of his enduring strengths.

He cut America no slack whatsoever and refused to express his criticisms in anything but the harshest terms:

"I am speaking as a black man from America which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy it’s as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don’t practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil."
~ (Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964)

At his most fierce, he invoked warnings that sounded more like threats:

"I, for one, as a Muslim, believe that the white man is intelligent enough...if he were made to realise how black people really feel and how fed up we are without that old compromising sweet talk...why you're the one who makes it hard for yourself. The white man believes you when you go to him with that old sweet talk, 'cause you've been sweet-talking him ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet-talking him. Tell him how you feel. Tell him what kind of hell you've been catching and let him know that if he's not ready to clean his house up... if he's not ready to clean his house up....he shouldn't have a house. It should catch on fire, and burn down."
~ (Speech in Los-Angeles after an attack on members of the Nation of Islam)

He spoke in simple but striking analogies that painted his argument for him:

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out three inches, that's not progress. If you pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress comes from healing the wound that the blow made, but they haven't even begun to pull the knife out...they won't even admit the knife is there."
~ (Interview after the NOI began eviction proceedings)

His desire for revolutionary change was articulated frequently:

"Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration of what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program, you may change your goal and you may change your mind. Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution...what was it based on? The landless against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost, was no compromise, was no negotiation. I'm telling you...you don't know what a revolution is. Because when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley, you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution...what was it based on? Land; the landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed. As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you are going to get violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else you don't even know? If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."
~ (The Ballot or the Bullet, October 10, 1963)

His knowledge of scripture was comprehensive and he knew how to reach a religious audience:

"They charged Jesus with sedition...didn't they do that? They said he was against Caesar. They said he was discriminating because he told his disciples, 'Go not the way of the gentiles, but rather go to the lost sheep.' Don't go near the gentiles. Go to the lost sheep. Go to the people who don't know who they are, who are lost from the knowledge of themselves and who are strangers in a land that is not theirs. Go to those people. Go to the slaves. Go to the second-class citizens. Go to the ones who are suffering the brunt of Caesar's brutality. And if Jesus were here in America today, he wouldn't be going to the white man. The white man is the oppressor. He would be going to the oppressed. He would be going to the humble. He would be going to the lowly. He would be going to the rejected and the despised. He would be going to the so-called American negro."
~ (Malcolm X in Los Angeles, May 22, 1962)

Reading speeches and interviews from the last year of his life is to read Malcolm X urge that Islamic leaders pay greater attention to the plight of Muslim world. Sound advice in 2011, it's an astonishingly prescient message for 1965:

"Since the Arab image is almost inseparable from the image of Islam, the Arab world has a multiple responsibility that it must live up to. Since Islam is a religion of brotherhood and unity those who take the lead in expounding this religion are duty-bound to set the highest example of brotherhood and unity. It is imperative that Cairo and Mecca (the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and the Muslim World League) have a religious "summit" conference and show a greater degree of concern and responsibility for the present plight of the Muslim world, or other forces will rise up in this present generation of young, forward-thinking Muslims and the "power centers" will be taken from the hands of those that they are now in and placed elsewhere."
~ (Al-Muslimoon Magazine, February, 1965)

None of his speeches or interviews can be properly appreciated without actually hearing them in the context in which they were delivered. His ability to speak about race in uncompromising terms, touch a crowd with the naked truth, articulate their anger, answer audience questions shrewedly and with style and deftly handle hostile interviewers remains unparalleled. Of all his rhetorical skills, his ability to defuse a situation with wit and humor has been buried the deepest but there can be no doubt that he could be a very funny man. The so-called leaders who followed in his wake, be it Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton have never come close to matching Malcolm's oratorical power and thus have never come close to reaching the audience he reached. In 1963, he was second only to John F. Kennedy as the most sought-after speaker on college campuses in the U.S. and was a guest at Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford and Yale.

Contrary to the almost universal public perception of him, Malcolm X never advocated violence. He advocated the right of self-defense and self-preservation that was deemed a fundamental right to all but black Americans. He demanded those rights by any means necessary. If somebody comes at you with a rifle or a club or a noose, and the government is either unwilling or unable to protect you, and you are exercising the freedom of speech or freedom of assembly or freedom of religion that your government prides itself upon, you are completely within your rights to defend yourself. It is a reasonable proposition now and it was a reasonable proposition then. As he once said when discussing the outrage over his statement that black people should go out and buy rifles and join rifle clubs: "White people been buying rifles all their lives...no commotion."

What follows is a letter (in part or in whole) from Malcolm X, known as Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (after his conversion to Traditional Islam), to his followers in Harlem. It was reprinted in The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley.

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.

I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca, I have made my seven circuits around the Ka'ba, led by a young Mutawaf named Muhammad, I drank water from the well of the Zam Zam. I ran seven times back and forth between the hills of Mt. Al-Safa and Al Marwah. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mt. Arafat.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.

I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their 'differences' in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called 'Christian' white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster - the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the walls and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth - the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.

Never have I been so highly honored. Never have I been made to feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe the blessings that have been heaped upon an American Negro? A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a white man, a United Nations diplomat, an ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his hotel suite, his bed. Never would I have even thought of dreaming that I would ever be a recipient of such honors - honors that in America would be bestowed upon a King - not a Negro.

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds.

Sincerely,

Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

The trip to Mecca immensely affected his insight and it is undeniable that his views changed after looking at the world through the eyes of Islam, and these views would eventually break his relationship with his teacher Elijah Muhammad (NOI Black-nationalist Leader) - and then isolate him and his family - and would therefore lead to his assassination.

As Malcolm X's profile rose, the rumours and lies being whispered into Elijah Muhammad's ears about the young minister's plans to usurp his power and take over the Nation spread steadily. The split between master and student had been well underway for some time.

Forced out of the Nation against his will, the combination of enmity from both the NOI and the American intelligence community meant his days were numbered and he knew it. Throughout 1964 and 1965 he and his followers were under constant attack at home and abroad. As threats against his life grew more frequent and more serious, he publicly labeled the NOI a criminal organization and Elijah Muhammad insane. When he made a public statement about Elijah Muhammad's infidelities, he had signed his own death warrant and publicly stated so in several interview. ("We weren’t training to become black belts: we were training to kill black belts.") In one interview, when asked by CBS' Mike Wallace about the possibility of his life being in jeopardy, he stated matter-of-factly, "I probably am a dead man already". In his autobiography, he stated that he didn't expect to live long enough to see its publication. He was right, again.

On January 14, 1965, his house was firebombed with his wife and children inside. The NOI publicly accused Malcolm X of trying to burn down his own house and murder his own family as a publicity stunt designed to delay eviction proceedings. One week later, Malcolm X prepared to deliver a major speech, outlining the founding principles of his newly established Organization of Afro-American Unity. On Sunday February 21, 1965, just after 3:00 p.m., Malcolm began speaking to an audience of about 400 people at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, just north of Harlem. His wife (pregnant with twins) and his four daughters sat in the audience near the front. Just after Malcolm greeted the crowd with the traditional "As-Salamu Alaykum," an argument between two men started near the back of the crowd. Malcolm's security rushed to investigate, a smokebomb went off and the crowd began to panic. In the confusion, assassins who had been sitting in the front rows rushed the stage and unloaded on Malcolm with a shotgun blast and pistol shots, hitting him 16 times in total, killing him. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m., shortly after he arrived at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.


The best book on the assassination of Malcolm X is Karl Evanzz' 1992 book The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X. Evanzz had access to the FBI's complete file on Malcolm X and knows the subject matter intimately. His book is absolutely essential to understanding the massive campaign directed against Malcolm X.


While his autobiography has never gone out of print and the text of many of his speeches have been available for years, the difference between reading his words on the page and seeing him deliver them in front of a receptive audience is the difference between black and white. While the climate may not have changed enough for his ideas to reach the mainstream, more and more people every day realize that the story of the hatemonger is a lie. They hear his actual words for himself and they see no reason to disassociate themselves from him thoroughly and completely:

"I really don’t know what to think about Malcolm X. The media has portrayed him as a violent man, yet all the quotations that I could find from him were things I agree with completely. If I were to judge this man, solely on the quotations that I was able to find for him...I would laud him."
~ (Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer, quotationspage.com)

"People today who claim Malcolm X was racist obviously have nowhere near a full comprehension of the type of era he lived in: lynching, burnings, and senseless random killings of black people. He just said out loud what most black people thought. For those who believed he should have been more peaceful and kind well he needed a reason to be. He believed in fighting back, and not taking any crap. Sorry if that isn't politically correct enough for you guys."
~ (youtube user, l9ois)

"I don't know much about Malcolm X but that one minute talk made a lot of sense to me....perhaps I have been lied to about this man."
~ (youtube user, snowball1776)

"I'm white, and growing up in school during Black History Month it was always like 'OK kids, there were these two guys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and they were both civil rights leaders but Malcolm X was violent so he wasn't as good.' And I believed that for a long time, but I've watched a lot of these videos and even at his most radical he was only talking about self defense and almost everyone is OK with that. I wonder if it was like that for everyone else? I wonder if little kids today are still learning like that?"
~ (youtube user, shondeaphid)

I'm pretty sure they are. He was not only too advanced for his own time, but for our time as well. In the end, he preached internationalism to a world that was still adjusting to life after colonialism. As long as the public associates him with hate and violence, it demonstrates a lack of understanding and perpetuates a lie that runs against our own best interests. However, it is a simple fact that the real philosophy of Malcolm X, a philosophy that cannot be erased or ignored and continues to spread, is still being seen and heard by more people every day. Over time, however long that time is, the truth does overcome lies. A time will come when Malcolm X is restored to the position of authority he held for many people during the last year of his life; as one of the most important human rights leaders the world has ever seen. Despite the best efforts of the FBI, the CIA, the NOI and the NYPD to silence the man, his words remain as strongly accusatory and accurate as ever. The criticism of global forces that denied human beings their legitimate rights remains as sharp and relevant as ever and the solution--peace, freedom, justice and equality for all people, by any means necessary--retains all of its honesty and power.



“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”
~ El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

 
NOTE:
The original detailed documentary based on which this post was inspired can found -- here

Those useless stuff

Most of the individuals on this planet are no more different than a 'sheep', and to describe such an individual using jargon 'sheeple' would be the right word and I was one such.
More & more people are programmed to be in a way ready to 'serve' another rather than to 'lead' for a change.

Almost all the parents brainwash their children to get into the likes of Technical Sciences - Medical, Engineering, Operations & Finances.
What is the difference if you are going to be a worker in the end, by a reductionist approach: you as an individual are programmed as wanting to serve someone or something in the end. This is not education, this is bull-crap, brainwashing and running behind 'Money & Societal-Pressure' instead of 'Pure Potential'.

I deeply believe anything remotely termed education has to deal with thought, deep reflection, thinking and intellectual pursuit and the subjects that fit this category are Sociology, History, Political Science, etc.

And we know what the parents are going to say, pretty much in lines of: "What are you wasting your time for?", "why are you thinking about economics", "What kind of job are you gonna get", "What are you gonna do with sociology", "What are you gonna do with psychology, anthropology or history" and the Ad-hominem word "Useless stuff !"
These are the sciences & knowledge that are broadly called 'humanities', these are the sciences that are actually the foundations of any society. The people in these fields frame how the society functions.

The most critical are those subjects that makes one think and to understand the questions: "who we are", and "what does it mean to be a human-being".
In our days the wall street starts with Adam Smith, an economist, and the once huge Soviet-empire it starts with the thinker Karl Marx, a sociologist.

Wake-Up! The world is in dire need of better 'humans' than 'soul-less techies' & 'gear-wheels in the machine'.



~ Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

Towards Materialistic Horizons

Materialism is a dirty word. It also gets a bad rap in psychology. Studies consistently show that people who agree with statements like "You will buy things just because you want them," tend to be:

* Less satisfied with life,
* Less happy,
* More likely to be depressed,
* More likely to be paranoid,
* More likely to be narcissistic.


Not a pretty picture, right?

But, just like studies examining the connection between success and happiness, many of the findings are correlative. As a result we can't say for sure that materialism causes all these things, only that they're associated. So, for better evidence, cue the experiment.
Experiential versus material purchases

Leaf Van Boven from the University of Colorado and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University carried out an intriguing experiment that gets at this question of whether materialism results in less happiness (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

They randomly divided students into two groups and gave each group slightly different instructions:

1. This group was asked to write a description of a material purchase that had made them happy. Material purchases include things like clothing, gadgets, computers and so on. This could be either something they had bought themselves or that had been bought for them.
2. The task this group had was only slightly different. They were asked to write a description of an experiential purchase that had given them pleasure. Examples of experiential purchases are meals out, admission tickets to concerts and travel.

To see how they were feeling in the moment, participants were given surreptitious measures both before and after writing these short descriptions. Then, after about a week, the same participants were given back their own descriptions of their purchases and asked to reflect on it. Again, they were asked to report on their feelings in the moment.

Comparing these two groups provided a way of comparing how participants felt about two different types of purchases. The results showed that participants felt better when they were contemplating their experiential purchases than their material purchases.
Thinking about experience

As a result of this experiment, Van Boven & Gilovich predicted that people spend more time overall contemplating their experiential rather than material purchases. To test this out they asked participants to think about experiential and material purchases they were particularly happy with. Then they were asked which they thought about more often. The results clearly showed it was the experiential purchases people thought about more often (83%).
Why do experiences fare better than possessions?

It seems, then, that at some level we understand that our experiential purchases give us more pleasure than our material purchases. But why is that? Van Boven (2005) suggests three reasons:

1. Experiences improve with time (possessions don't).
The reason why experiences improve with time may be because it is possible to think about experiences in a more abstract manner than possessions. For example if you think back to a fantastic summer from your youth, you might easily remember an abstract sense of warm sunshine and exuberance, but you're less likely to remember exactly what you did day-by-day. On a moment-by-moment basis you might have been quite bored, although you'll tend not to remember that.

Material possessions are harder to think about in an abstract sense. The car you bought is still a car, that great new jacket you picked up cheap is still just a jacket. It's more likely the experience of that summer has taken on a symbolic meaning that can live longer in your memory than a possession.

2. Experiences are resistant to unfavourable comparisons
It's well established that social comparisons can have a huge effect on how we view what might seem like positive events. One striking example is the finding that people prefer to earn $50,000 a year while everyone else earns $25,000, instead of earning $100,000 themselves and having other people earn $200,000 (Solnick & Hemenway, 1998).

In other words it's not about how much we earn, it's about how much we earn in comparison to other people. It's the social comparison, then, not the actual amount of money, that affects how we feel about our earnings.

A similar effect is seen for possessions. When there's so many flatscreen HD TVs to choose from, it's easy to make unfavourable comparisons between our choice and the others available (check out Barry Schwartz on why too much choice is bad for us).

Experience, however, seems to be more resistant to these sorts of unfavourable comparisons. To explain this phenomenon, Van Boven puts forward the idea that it is because of the unique nature of experience. It's more difficult to make an unfavourable comparison when there is nothing directly comparable. After all, each of our youthful summers is different (even if only a little).

I also think it's hard to really compare our own experiences with those of other people. Comparing possessions, however, is generally easy.

3. Experiences have more social value
There are two reasons experiences have more social value than possessions. First, experiences tend to encourage social relationships and increased social relationships are good for our happiness. Second, it is more socially acceptable to discuss our experiences with others. People who bang on about their possessions are considered much less likeable than those who talk about their holiday adventures.
Limitations

Of course, it has to be acknowledged that this type of research is at an early stage. Van Boven points to a couple of potential problems yet to be investigated:

1. The experiments examined here looked at short-term emotions - will these short-term emotions add up to long-term happiness?
2. Highly materialistic people might actually get more pleasure out of material purchases than experiences.

Materialist dilemmas

Despite these limitations, it seems that along with experimental evidence, there are also some good psychological reasons why experiences are more likely to make us happy than material possessions. On top of this, at some level we do seem to understand that experiences probably beat possessions in terms of happiness.

Set against this is the fact that we clearly live in a society awash with materialism, where objects are valued way beyond their possible contribution to our happiness. So how can this conflict possibly be resolved?

One answer to this question is that while we're likely to think that other people are materialist, we defend our own purchases as necessary and at worst, indulgent. After all, materialism is a dirty word. A dirty word that's on everyone's minds.


~ Thanks: www.spring.org.uk