Friday 29th of March 2024

a jihad against jihad...

jihad2

Using Billboards to Stake Claim Over ‘Jihad’


By STEVEN YACCINO and POH SI TENG


CHICAGO — There is an advertising war being fought here — not over soda or car brands but over the true meaning of the word “jihad.”

Backing a continuing effort that has featured billboards on the sides of Chicago buses, the local chapter of a national Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has been promoting a nonviolent meaning of the word — “to struggle” — that applies to everyday life.

Supporters say jihad is a spiritual concept that has been misused by extremists and inaccurately linked to terrorism, and they are determined to reclaim that definition with the ad campaign, called My Jihad.

“My jihad is to stay fit despite my busy schedule,” says a woman in a head scarf lifting weights in an ad that started running on buses in December. “What’s yours?”

But last month another set of ads, with a far different message, started appearing on buses here.

Mimicking the My Jihad ads, they feature photos and quotations from figures like Osama bin Laden and Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010. “Killing Jews is worship that draws us closer to Allah,” says one ad, attributing the quotation to a Hamas television station. They end with the statement: “That’s his jihad. What’s yours?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/ad-campaigns-fight-it-out-over-meaning-of-jihad.html?_r=0

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As a battle of billboards looms to redefine the word "Jihad" amongst the Muslim in America with softer and/or harder meanings, Gus suggests that the world Jihad should take a massive leap backward in Islamic belief. The idea of "struggle" (Jihad) is too prominent. It is a concept of oppression, of suffering, of aggression and of submission. It is a tool that is used with the effect of suppressing the joy of life, whether intended or not. 

The problem of translation has always been one of cultural structures... Words in one culture rarely have a perfect equivalent in another. There can be errors of understanding concept due to these differences. My analysis may suffer from this displacement here, but the possibility of misunderstanding is unavoidable at the interface of cultures...


So should we discuss the "Jihad"? We should despite the pitfalls of translations.

The writing is weird: in the image above, I believe I wrote the word "Jihad"... The second line should read "Love Thy Neighbour"... The third writing is that of "Love"...
According to most Muslims, "Jihad" means "struggle". But "struggle" can mean a lot of things and it is in its association with other ideas that the meaning is refined... Struggling with oneself, struggling with other people, war... It can have also various strength and focus in males and females. Female might see Jihad as a struggle of their submissive selves, in a world ruled by men, while men could see Jihad as a struggle against an enemy, usually "infidels". Jihad (struggle) is thus more associated with pain than contentment... 

It's the struggle of one being rejected, of one being tempted, of one being belittled, of one being in a difficult situation in which one does not have the upper hand and one has to fight or do something... I could be wrong (I am wrong) but it appears that with "Jihad" being so prominent in the culture, pain becomes a greater feature in the Islamic philosophy than contentment and/or happiness. Or happiness becomes a sense of retribution as part of inflicting an eye-for-an-eye pain, as part of justice.
In Jihad, pain becomes the reference point of life rather than the joy of living. It tends to foster a victim mentality or that of a ultimate aggressor... which is then complemented with "Insha'Allah"... leaving the outcome to the gods... In some way, there is a parallel acceptance of "woe is me" poetry in this deferment.
Let it be known that everyone has a "struggle"... Even in the western philosophy, some people go and see a psychiatrist to deal with their "problems". Some deal with it by lifting weights... 

In the past the catholic church had a similar painful view on the purpose of life — still has to a lesser degree... The struggle for catholics is "thy cross to bear" and/or foinding ways to erase the original sin, a "mistake" that has nothing to do with our present life but only is transmitted and implanted by the memory of the culture. The "struggle" in the catholic church has been mitigated by redemption, confession... and "love" — god's love and "love one another" has been a feature where the "struggle' takes second seat... except with the "guilt".
In "jihad", we struggle on the first line in a philosophical war, and there is a hidden sense of permanent battle between good and evil within the self — god and the devil battle it out in our daily life... 
Should I have another cream bun?... God will tell us it's gluttony to have seconds and the devil will tempt us because it's nice. In fact, it's our arteries we should be worried about.
Same with most of what we do... We dismiss nature but nature rules the roost.
In most religious format, this battle is deemed to only be resolved by the death of someone and the ensuing glorification of one's life should one had been "good" and straight on the tally board of the rule book in which "jihad" and its interpretations feature prominently. 
In reality we can live our life well and full of goodness, without the "struggle" nor the "guilt" by having ethics that make us aware and responsible of the well-being of others. It is not a struggle against one self or others, it is a hand that helps us and others together.

The struggle only exists because we let it be. We let it take over our lives because we don't know better, because we don't want to know better or we are not allowed to know better.
We reinforce the "struggle" with artificial values that are arcane, are dogmatically erroneous and/or contrary to nature. It weigh us down. 
The "struggle" keeps us busy though — as we could believe, should we were not in pain, we may not know that we exist... The "struggle" is a familiar stone in our shoe. But it does not have to be there.
WE can love thy neighbour, without the religious struggle nor the dogma... Seriously. 
Some don't find life to be a struggle but something to be cherished no matter what. And this is where humanism comes in. 

Too often, the struggle needs something to be blamed, or an enemy... Someone to blame for whatever — whether in the past, the present and the future... 

We need to ease up. Muslims need to ease up... and replace their symbol of Jihad (at top) with that of love (below it).

Gus Leonisky. 

when jihad went to school...

 

A woman and her brother have appeared in a French court after a three-year-old child named Jihad was sent to school wearing a T-shirt with the words 'I am a bomb' printed on it.

The principal and teachers at the school in Sorgues, southern France, notified authorities after Boucha Bagour sent her son to classes dressed in the shirt.

Le Parisien reported that the words 'I am a bomb' were inscribed on the front, and the words 'Jihad, born September 11' on the back.

The expression plays on the popular French saying 'Je suis la bombe', which translates roughly as 'I am the best'.

Ms Bagour, 35, and her brother, Zeyad Bagour, 29, were summoned to appear before the court after the school and local mayor complained.

Mr Bagour gave the shirt to the boy as a gift. He told the court he 'had no intention to provoke or shock'.

 

http://www.skynews.com.au/offbeat/article.aspx?id=852545

 

 

NOTE: Jihad is NOT one of the five pillars of Islam...

 

no jihad in nature...

 

The struggle of nature...



Daily, some mighty battles are fought in the natural world... It's bird versus bug... 

It's small bird versus big bird... It's cat versus bird. It's bug versus cat... 

And the plants fight it out for a space in the sun. 

But these battles have nothing to do with Jihad... They are part of the way the life of nature has constructed itself: the food chain. The protein chain in which structured proteins have a limited time span — apart from those of cancer that are unstructured.

As we humans analyse the processes and the fine minutia of the construct of proteins via various techniques, including the so-called "Western Blot", the animal world knows empirically that without pinching some other creatures' proteins, one dies... Simple...

It's a fascinating dance. The local minahs swoop near a wall where an insect takes a breather till it becomes food. The swallows catch flies in flight — with swerves and dives that make the envy of fighter pilots. 

The lion catches the antelope that eat grasses but whose guts absorbs the proteins from microbial fermentation broken down as amino-acids and peptides.... The grass itself manufactures some proteins in its seeds (nuts, kernels) from various decomposed matter.

We know that some of the first blocks of proteins were built by bacteria, microbes and viruses. These become part of a food chain in which they also attack bigger life forms including humans — all in order to steal proteins and multiply... Meanwhile our own white blood cells fight the invaders and kill (eat) them... We call them macrophage (large eaters).

NO animal species can kill off its food sources... There is an equation of Chaos theory that defines this interaction between the present and the next: should the source of food become scarce or disappears, the animal species dwindles and eventually dies too... Goats in the wild do not destroy the environment in the way they do when herded.

The natural struggle is non-stop. But it is not a "jihad'... 

A Jihad is a struggle with a philosophical intent. The struggle of nature is only because it is. It is physiologically part of the birth, growth and death of individuals in the survival cycle of the pool of gene-proteins started at least 3.7 billion years ago.

The process has reached an amazing complexity in diversity and our latest (quite old really) foray is to find ways to extend our own individual life or expand it into "immortality".

Animals have spacial recognition... Even bats that live in caves have developed extra senses to navigate in pitch back. Most animals species have a sense of hierarchy and needs. Even cockroaches become depressed should they be "lonely". There is a time at which every individual of a species dies. The cycle of duplication and reproduction maintains the momentum of life. But the sub-cycle of our own regeneration, eventually, looses the rigourous characteristics of survival and we age. We die mostly from "degeneration". 

So, we humans are part of this process though, in our evolution, we have developed a greater cognition through a greater memory... We have extended our individual memory with a gamut of social memories. 

Elephant groups develop social memories... A single elephant in a zoo has every right to be traumatised... "what am I? I am not like you, human? Are you my mummy?" The elephant has also lost the sense of hierarchy. Of course the concepts are not expressed such in pommy English, but the deep feelings would swell within the inner self of the beast... The beast has a struggle which is not its own. It's a struggle brought onto it by another species, humans, which, as this stage, is in the bind of a complex vicarious, protective and sadistic set of processes.

The habitat of the elephant is destroyed by humans, the beasts are killed by humans for their long front teeth  — and the balance of life is under a great threat, for the elephants. We humans are imposing a jihad on the elephant. We have added to their natural struggle of survival. We have added a jihad on the elephant.

And this is what human do very well. Stressing other living creatures and each others with two major advantageous diseases: greed and deception... 

Apart from silly chooks, birds in their natural habitats won't over eat... A obese bird does not fly. An obese bird does not run... An obese bird either dies or stops eating. But you don't see obese birds... You might see birds that gulp food, but there is a moment when that bird knows enough is enough.

For humans enough is never enough. This is greed. This is our major disease.

There is a lot of deception in nature. Many animals catch their prey (food) by various stratagems from the most obvious spider webs to stalking quietly...

But the deception in humans is aimed at ourselves: we mostly deceive ourselves. Our cultural system are designed to deceive individuals to be part of the group. The "Jihad" is part of such deception. 

We deceive ourselves, individually and socially. The various sources of this deception lead to conflicts between cultures. It leads to our belief in immortality.

But the main part is our own self-deception: We lie to ourselves. The Jihad (the struggle) is basically the struggle we fight within — and export as well against other cultures — between our various misunderstandings that are mostly alien to the struggle of life itself. 

Morality is a form of greed and deception controlling agent with caveats that lifts those controls to gain advantages against others, with greed. 

The range of human misunderstandings are many and range from political beliefs to religious indoctrination. Laden with greed, our self and social deceptions can become lethal to our philosophical humanity and to our animalistic humanity...

Jihad needs to be displaced by the greater concept of love, even if love is delusive. Love tends to reduce the amount of greed, decrease the level of aggressive deception and increase the level of comprehension in all artificial exports of human behaviour.

We need more love and less jihad...


Gus Leonisky

 

jihad against topless jihad day...

A group of Muslim women has launched an online campaign in response to demonstrations by bare-breasted activists staged in front of mosques and Tunisian embassies across Europe.

The "Muslimah Pride Day" was organised in response to the Ukrainian women's rights group Femen's self-declared "Topless Jihad Day", a day of topless protests around the world to support Tunisian activist Amina Tyler.

Organiser Sofia Ahmed, writing on Facebook, said: "Muslimah [Female Muslim] pride is about connecting with your Muslim identity and reclaiming our collective voice. Let's show the world that we oppose Femen and their use of Muslim women to reinforce Western imperialism."

Using social media sites, some Muslim women have posted photographs of themselves holding placards with messages to Femen such as "Nudity does not liberate me - and I do not need saving" and "Femen can't tell me what I can and can't wear".

The Femen rallies on Thursday targetted the case of Tyler, who sparked a scandal last month when she posted pictures of herself online with the words "My body belongs to me" emblazoned across her bare chest.

Supporters fear she could face criminal prosecution.

"Topless Jihad Day" was celebrated in capitals such as Berlin, Kiev and Paris.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/04/20134511838270701.html

 

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"Femen can't tell me what I can and can't wear"...


No-one is telling anyone what to wear — except old depraved men who have enforced a strict dress code in some countries...


The "excessive" use of nudity by the Femen here is to alert more women that one has the power to change and act if one wants to, except in countries where depraved old men have decreed a strict dress code, strict bans on driving and bicycle riding for women...

 

These traditions obviously have been "designed" to protect young depraved men from behaving like depraved old men with a bit more in their pants, by removing any bad thoughts and temptation ( as if this would work!)... I may be wrong, but It could be some languages themselves are void of the many varied moires and colours of life — this lack of linguistic expression being represented by women having to wear a black tent with a small slit in front of the eyes...


We need more love and more friendships, and less uptight jihad...