Morality Crisis: Tale of two aftars

Though Percy Bysshe Shelley advises:

"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past"

Though I concur with the second part because if we stay trapped up in bindings of our past we may not have the courage or the motivation to move ahead towards a better future. 

But the first part I have problem with, because I do fear for the future.

Not particularly for my own sake by for the sake of next generation.

What kind of world my children will inherit. Unfortunately there is a limited amount of effort I can really put in as my view of extent of will power is pretty limited as elaborated below.

Most of the things we may want to control are out of our reach only what Allah wills to put within our reach

Among many issues clouding my mind like diminishing resources, wars, rising inter class and inter cultural hatred, first and foremost is the future of morality.

I do not want to sound like preacher here so will just narrate the incidences I encountered in the sacred month of ramazan 2014 or 1435 Hijri.

Incident 1:

Went with my family to do aftar at a famous hill top restaurant in Islamabad. Maître d' two questions were:

• smoking or non smoking
• Family or gents only.

After selecting family and non smoking I was lead to our table leaving aside the fact that I already made reservation a day before :P. After hearing segregation of family and gents only I was somewhat hopeful that may be it will become a trend so the families who try to observe even some basic form of hijab can eat comfortably. But Alas my hoped were shattered, not least of because families only section become gents section too but I stumbled upon the real reason of segregation between families and gents only in such a posh restaurant and mind you it has nothing to with hijab.

six tables in so called families section three already occupied with "HOT DATES" and by dates i don't mean the yummy ones you break fast with but the ones you used to yearn for in your adolescent days.:) it do not matter we went out out on one or not but at least we all yearned.

I may be mistaken though but those ye olde dates in my days were a kind of different i.e.:

Rarely at aftar

usually during college/university timings.

Much more reserved i.e. hugging touching a big no no

and here is the punch line much more COVERED. By covered I mean we get to seldom see bare arms, armpits, shoulders, collar bone spinal cord ..... you getting the point I hope :)

From the couple actions to their frankness and dressing everything was objectionable to me and I was not feeling comfortable sitting with them their; low point; when they started blowing cigarette smoke in to each other mouths.

By the way they absolutely didn't seem related by blood, and it was a week night.

Big Question: What kind of impression my kids would be getting  ?

Incident 2:

Venue: Most famous bakery of Islamabad/Rawalpindi, guess which one !!

Time: 12:30 AM Sunday

Purpose of my visit: Buy some things for Aftar

There was a group of people two men in their late 40s poorly dressed hair white, a woman seemingly in 30s really made up, and a boy in 20s seemingly related to woman.

They bought a couple of things like chickine broast patties etc. 

Conversation I overheard:

Old Man A: Flat mein oven ho ga. (Will there be oven there in the flat).

Young boy: Jee ho to sahi magar yahiin se garam karwa lein (Yes may be but better if we get heated here).

Young Women: jee yahi se garam karwa lete hai ja kar kha leing ge (Lets get the things heated so we can feast when we reach flat)

(It was 10am in ramazan)

Old Man: Theek garam ker do.(Ok heat it up)

What was curios for me was:

a) People, their ages and their attitudes, men were really confused

b) These people didn't seem like they will not be fasting i.e. belonging to Christian or some other community in Pakistan, sick or not able other wise to fast so why there were getting things heated?

and and other thing which confirmed my suspicions was I also incidentally reached pay counter with them and when one of the old man took his wallet out to pay a little diamond shaped purple pill with pfizer written on one side fell out. And their Intentions became almost clear. 

Just to gauge his reaction I said "uncle jee app ki goli gir gayi hai" (uncle you dropped your pill). He didn't answer me was visibly flustered took his change and took off leaving the pill their and later i found out also forgot his chicken too :) 

Big Question: Why are such people allowed to operate such way even in ramazan and why can not men find comfort in their homes ?

As this blog is used to vent out my rants which I could not keep in so here is another one and readers are allowed to criticize me but I felt personally deeply disturbed and offended by these two encountered 

10/1/1435 a day when Rawalpindi bled and burnt

15/11/13 or on Islamic calendar 10/1/1435 a black day for my dear mother land, my beloved country Pakistan. An annual occurrence when a religious minority in our country shias take out their procession mourning the death of Hazrat Imam Hussain 

It’s not just in Pakistan but all through the world wherever shias are in some strength they do take out the processions.

Though raison d'etre of Pakistan was a country where Muslims could practice their faith freely not be oppressed or oppress any one. Pakistan was founded as a bouquet of different cultures religions and ethnicities. There were Hindus, Parsis, Chirstians, Ahamdis, Bengalis, Pakhtoons, Sindhis, Balochis Punjabis, Sunnis, Shias etc

Out great thinkers of time gonebye  knew that strength lies in unity  Baba Bulleh shah great sufi poet said

Masjid dha de, mandir dha de, dha de jo kucch dainda 
Par kisi da dil na dhain, Rab dilan vich rehnda.. 

Tear down the mosque and the temple; break everything in sight 
But do not break a person's heart, it is there that God resides

Allama Iqbal the one who dreamt up Pakistan in his writings and declared as poet of the nation wrote

Eik ho muslims haram ki pasbani keliye

Neel ke sahil l ke tab khake kashghar

May the Muslims unite in watching over the Kaaba,

From the banks of the Nile to the deserts of Kashghar

Stories about that incident are different an account that can be somewhat agreed upon is:

“while the processions was passing through a densely populated area Raja bazar of Rawalpindi Punjab Pakistan, Imam masjid ( a person who addresses the gathering during Friday prayers & lead the prayers too) used loud speakers to condemn the act of procession and beliefs of the Shia community. Procession goers also tried to use loudspeakers and war of words ensued. Leaders of procession disconnected electricity. Then it started from stone throwing and then all hell broke loose. People snatched weapons from security personnel, who abandoned their posts, people were killed & children slaughtered”

Only Allah knows which side suffered more casualties or which side was more responsible, but the thing is all those died and injured were Pakistanis, my countrymen. Shops that were burnt damaged my dear country

Conspiracy theorists say that there were outside men who incited the incident. It’s a continuing though from day one that those destroy Pakistan must be from outside black sheeps we people of Pakistan are pure pristine innocent and we don’t do a cent of damage. But to an extent yes if we have fissures between ourselves, our enemies will make  hole out of those fissures

I am not saying which side is wrong and which side is right, but taken as a whole this incident is wrong.

From day one we as a nation have been alienating minorities it started from Parsis, Hindus Christians then to Bengalis. When all three were successfully eliminated and forced to hide and feel separate from rest of us we moved on to Ahmedis, and if this continues it would be Shias and only Allah knows can even eventually come to clashes between Brelevi Deobandi, ahle hades etc.

A healthy body is that in which all organs work in sync. Even in management we have concept of strategic fit i.e. develop organizational goals, then align every one to those goals so that their personnel goals benefit the nations. This is called integration of work force.

What we have instead is disintegration, let’s blame our leaders after wards, because we the masses can give them power and take power away from them but first we have to be united on a single purpose.

Divided we have been conquered, destroyed, ransacked, and what we do further widen the fissures. Some very dear friends of mine said “Ban the processions” remember how you would feel if something you consider a standard of devotion and a holy celebration banned. How would it help Pakistan? It would take away from us a large percent of population, workforce that should be integrated in to the nation and working towards advancing this dear mother land of ours

So people remember, Americans, Indians & corrupt leaders come afterwards if we want a positive change for our contrary we must start with the man in the mirror, change ourselves and then we can influence people around us. Fear mongering is not the way forward but friendship unity and brotherhood is.

random ayat

Application that displays random ayats from Quran Majeed Very good app for muslims, in addition to random ayats, user can him self jump to a particular ayat of surah

WARNING: Alpha version, find function not working rest 100 percent correct, Me doing full time job, part time study with two kids, working on app what ever time left, so manage ur expectations accordingly

To facebook or not to facebook ?? that is the question

It was 2007 that a Danish Newspaper Jylend Posten printed some offensive cartoon depicting our Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) in a comical sense. Muslims umma was infuriated for the disrespect shown to the final prophet and harbinger of religion for all mankind.

In Pakistan the reaction was violent. Widely spread looting, burning and general mayhem continued for several days. Several buses of a premium bus service were burn in Peshawar. ATM broken in to of various banks. Instead of trying to put the anger in a positive direction and recording our sentiments in a positive way this action was like burning your own house down, if the neighbor humiliates you. Emboldened by the lack of singular effort from Islamic Countries, other news papers from neighboring countries also reprinted that cartoon, in the name of promoting free speech.

In may 2010, some xyz bloke made a “everybody draw Muhammad” group on Facebook and people started gathering on that. They decided to celebrate a day to hold a competition for these blasphemous sketches. Another great offense against the sentiments of Muslims.

Our reaction in Pakistan, a person filed a case in LHC, LHC ordered blocking the blasphemous page only. Ministry of Information Technology bans the base URL www.facebook.com from PIE (Pakistan Internet Exchange), provides a phone number where citizens can complain and get the sites blocked. Around 800 sites were black listed in this process including twitter and youtube, though they were again made to work.

For my on line social life and I think for most of the people who were committed to Facebook for keeping in touch with their friends this incident was like a virtual nuclear blast. Once the debris settled and the Facebook was unblocked the social landscape has become quite barren, with people shifting from Facebook to other venues like myspace etc. It seemed like lashkare Orkutt was to blame for this terrorist attack :)

“Why the love of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) rises in us

when there is an attack on our ideology, why not we show love under

normal circumstances by sticking to his words and the examples

he has left for us”

Fallout from the blocking of Facebook for common people:

• Access denied to a powerful communication medium through which they kept in contact with families spread over whole world

• Opportunists like millatfacebook.com start entering the market, BTW are the people behind millat facebook any way related to people behind makkah cola :)

and the greatest harm

“MUSLIMS WERE UNABLE STAGE A UNIFIED

ATTACK FOR THIS BLASPHAMY AND RELAIZE

THE WORLD THAT THEIR

SENTIMENTS ARE VALUABLE AS WELL”

If their was a anti Semite group denying holocaust it would be closed. Even MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) successfully bring down whole sites in Law Suite.

“ALL THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD

FAILED TO CLOSE A SINGLE GROUP”

Why the decision to to ban facebook was questionable at best:

• Is a Pakistan Provincial High Court has jurisdiction to pass decision on a case where the Plaintiff has already agreed to a contract with a foreign entity i.e. I agree check box when creating facebook account

• What about all the porn sites why are not they blocked, aren't they even more blasphemous and hurtful for our din.

• What about movie downloads that are even offered by on line portals of PTCL and Wateen

• If facebook is blocked lets block the whole INTERNET because such thing eventually spread out of their root site and are only a Google search away.

• What effect the blockage had on facebook, according to Alexa www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/pk total number of users of facebook from Pakistan at 2,359,620

“FACEBOOK TRAFFIC FROM PAKISTAN IS ONLY .51% OF

THE TRAFFIC IT RECIEVES FROM WHOLE WIDE WORLD”

So is there any chance that .51% is going to put any dent in their viewer ship a big bold in your face NO. In fact Facebook become the grieved party. If we would have been able to convey the hurt Muslims all over the world have felt then facebook would be the cruel one.

The Solution:

“Eik hon Muslim haram ki pasbani ke lie

neel ke sahil se le kar tabkhake kashgir”

• First try to protest at OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) level and lodge a case at International Court of Justice to block such blasphemous acts for ever with not possibility of any one doing that again

• If unsuccessful block the facebook at OIC level.

• Then blocking blasphemous sites would become a cat and mouse game as the content eventually spreads out, so as long as there is orkut, myspace etc, such attacks on Muslims would continue. The solution prepare a robust social site for offer in all Islamic countries like china has their own search engine baidu baidu and chat protocol QQ.

• Involving other Islamic contories would benefit by increase the market of such products

• If black listing is the only solution left at the country level, instead of blocking any site on whim, make a comprehensive cyber policy where specific types of content is blocked include porn,blasphemous, even soft core porn and strict adherence to Islamic moral principals.

• This is the China Model, where they have specified things to be banned any company not cooperating gets kicked out, Google case in point.

Finally a humble plea for all my friends who think they are doing a great service to Muslim umma by not returning to face book:

“IF YOU ARE STILL VISITING ;) SITES AND TORRENTING

MOVIES, AND IF NOT; EVEN THEN COME BACK TO FACEBOOK,

I M MISSING Y'ALL”

remember Farz come before any thing else in din.

Once upon a Friday

Due to my job being on site, I am out of city usually and not able to say Friday Prayers. Last Friday I was lucky to be home on Friday and decided to say prayers what ever may come, even though I reached home just on time for prayers. I went to mosque, there the Imam was already on salat.

The mosque I go is the central mosque of area, and I go their for every prayer when I am at home, regularly. But on Friday there was teenagers and grown men outside mosque brandishing sticks. When I tried to park car at my usual spot in front of mosque with parking boundary clearly marked on pavement. One of 20 something Danda maulvi came and said I move my car to the new designated parking, I went there and found the parking already full. So I came back and decided to park there, no matter what they say, as this is a mosque after all and I am there to say prayers and why so much security needed, that would make me miss the thing I came here for.

Some things need clarification here, the usual parking is about 3 foot distance from wall of mosque, with a lawn in between. New parking they made specially for that day is in a dirt ground right next to the mosque wall so the usual parking is better from security point of view. Other thing is that the mosque under discussion on several occasions had a mujahid for Friday khutba. And a banned organization jammatt ud dawa openly collect funds in the mosque.

Well after saying prayer I came out and found that they have deflated my tire. Though there was already a car parked next to the car, and several others parked later but they deflated the tire purposefully.

My analysis for the boys actions are

• Joblessness

• Frustration

• Inflation

• Widening class gap

• No Proper education facilities of any kind

• Insufficient motivation for education

But the question is what should be my reaction

a) Should I stay passive change the mosque

b) take the issue up with the mosque administration who obviously is also involved

100. should reactionary aggressive measures to mosque administration\

d) other ----------------

Society of Surveillance

This is an article from June 2010 Issue of PC magazine and describes a 1984 like use of computer laptops

Blog

Phishing

Phishing is a new Internet crime, that is flourishing day by day. To define Phishing lets say

“Phishing is a way to steal personnel data of Internet users such as credit card information, account information etc by make a malicious web site masquerade as a trust worthy entity.

“

According to antiphishing.org Phishing crime rose by 43% march this year as compared to last year

Phishing use social engineering skill to fool users. Most commonly by referring to malicious web site which is made to look like the authentic site of a bank or other financial institution. Differentiating the site from the original site require keen observation. However Phishing is not only done through email or IM even the original site may be wormed to refer the user to malicious pages as happened with myspace.com

Its important to know what Phishing is and how a user can avoid being phished and what steps can IT Security managers can take to deal with phishers, consider that more than $2 billion is lost my businesses annually on insurance covers relating to Phishing. Now even some banks are not providing insurance to claims due to Phishing. Their logic is that customer made the choice to enter the information in to the fake web site.

This article will deal with

1. How to spot phishing web sites

2. What to do after you've been phished

How can people protect themselves from becoming a victim of a phishing scam ?

By taking simple precautionary measures we can protect ourselves from phishers, and save ourselves

from on line fraud

1. Don’t click links within emails that ask for personal, financial, or account information. Go to main page of the organization instead.

2. Banks usually do not ask for information on the Internet they got nothing to do with your pin code, if still in doubt talk to the customer service of the bank, and instead of using the phone number in the email its better to look the number up.

3. A message being generally addressed instead of being specifically address to you is a sure way to tell, you are being phished.

4. Confirm the URL in the address bar if it spells right and is not a number, like IP adress. Normally phishers change a letter to redirect to their pages; like gogle.com instead of google.com.

5. Using book marks would be safer as it would lead you to the exact site, instead of entering every time, as a typo can lead you to a phishers site.

6. When replying to emails with sensitive, check the message headers. The ‘From:’ address and the ‘Return-path’ should be same, if they are different then the email address is spoofed.

7. Look at the expanded headers of the emails to trace the path of email, phishing emails use dubious mail servers, and anonymizing services.

8. Login sites of banks and other institutions dealing with private sensitive information use secure sites so in the address bar at the beginning of the address it should be HTTP not HTTPS; for secure HTTP.

9. Secure sites use a certificate and a certificate signing authority indicated by the padlock icon in the bottom bar of the explorer window, confirm its presence; it shows the site is validated by a certificate.

10. Most of the phishers are able to get a spoofed certificate now a days too, so click the padlock icon and confirm the company name of the certificate matches with the URL.

11. Most modern browsers check the certificate for expiry dates and validity instead of clicking through the certificate warning, pay attention to hem.

12. Use a phishing filter add ons for the browsers.

13. Phishing sites are usually like poor imitations of the originals, with spelling mistakes incorrect graphics etc, so be on the look out for the anomalies in the design.

14. Resist greed, like free money offers; if some thing is too good to be true then it must not be true.

15. If your friends account is compromised then the mail could come from his email address, confirm him by phone before giving out personnel information.

What action can people take if they discover that their private information has been stolen

Prevention is better than cure so the best policy is to avoid being phished, however if a negligence is already done, following measures could be taken to minimize the damage

1. Report to the organization whose site the phiser replicated, block your account.

2. Change your password immediately .

3. If you are unable to login use the hint service and change password and hint and contact the organization directly.

4. Check the transaction history, may be you are able to get insurance cover for fraudulent transactions

5. Several sites banking sites and Gmail offer log in and activity history keep, check the history frequently.

6. Report scam to your local law enforcement agency.