Some points to consider while distinguishing Muslims and Islamists

Before I begin to write this I want to express my intention behind this article. As a cultural Muslim, I like to check myself in regards to my beliefs and understanding based on my observation, research and experiences. I have tried not to be biased, but as a human I may have made some or many errors. That I leave to the readers to conclude with their comments and criticism.

Now to begin with

                                Muslim                                                                    Islamist

Believer of 5 pillars Namaz, Rozah (Fasts), Hajj, Zakat and Jihad	Believer of Sects based 5 pillars of Islam like Wahabi, Deobandi, Shia, Barelvi etc
Forms and follows his beliefs based on his/her perception mostly associated with emotions, fear, customs, history and values	Follows and spreads beliefs of his religious leader/s, without any room for acceptance of belief that contradicts the overall notion (it could be family, social political groups as well as the religious groups of Madaris)
Accepts other religions in existence but not in beliefs, relevance or alternative and holds his/her beliefs as the most superior	Doesn’t accept other religions in terms of existence or beliefs, and considers his/her own beliefs as the most superior
Not an Activist at heart	Activist
Holds history  and culture as important aspect of belief	Holds no or low priority to history and culture
Extremist views that can lead to anger and violence on accounts of God and Prophet/s	Extremist views in regards to God, Prophet/s, Caliphate, Imamat, Sahaba, Pir, Ameers and Religious leaders
Believes in creationism (try to relate creationism with metaphysics and science without scientific research or proof and/or evidence – their relevance is self-conceptualized and emotionally driven)	Creationism is the only truth they know as told by their religious leaders
Submission without rational, logical explanation. If something contradicts with the science they may reject a proven fact in contrast to their beliefs	Total submission no questions asked and no answers required
Believes in Authoritarian rule, but accepts social liberty on grounds of universal human rights and education unless shirk or apostasy is in context	Believes in Authoritarian rule and do not accept social liberty on grounds of universal human rights and education

We want our women to be funny ... but

It’s weird to start an answer with a question, but situation calls for it. Who’s the funniest woman you know? Or is globally seen as funny? You do need some time to actually answer that right, but try asking that same question for men, and you would actually have more answers than you think you had. Ellen’s show would be a no match to the generally offensive male humor you see on South Park, Beavis n Butthead, jay n silent bob n so on. Legendary comedians like Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Robin Williams all the way up to the silent reformist Charlie Chaplin. The global idea of funny from men to women somehow ducks down women contributors by huge numbers and even ages.

The prevalence of depressive disorder in Pakistan is at phenomenal rate of 44.4% as per the most recent poll conducted 6 years ago, that’s how updated we are, (25.5 percent in males and 57.5 percent in females) according to eminent psychiatrist and Pakistan Association for Mental Health (PAMH).

Causes can diversely vary from severe financial and housing difficulties, large number of children and literacy in the background of social adversity were particularly closely associated with depression percent in both the genders. Taking a non-empirical approach I wouldn’t compare men or women’s mental stability or instability for all the things they do or they don’t in regards to humor. Keeping both external and internal factors constant for men and women, somehow men still stand out as the funnier gender. With merely 750 trained psychiatrists in Pakistan and most of them based in urban areas like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta, it is a lofty task to treat such a huge number of patients as well. In women's case even liberal movements could not trigger a recognition for sense of humor and women are still not funny. What is the excuse here people?

Comedy is not about happiness. It’s more about exaggeration and creating a situation that can transform even the darkest and most sadistic issue to be worthy of a gag. Sense of humor has the ability to simplify complexes into stupidity or wisdom while being hysterical. It’s also about maturity and the ability to understand things on a deeper level and feel the hidden gags in tragedy. But that’s not how women see it or adapt it and they still have a hard time learning it. They still get offended on things way more than men they would always find humor to be offensive, dirty, racist, sexist, chauvinist and so on. Ofcourse it’s not the same for all the women, it’s a general observation.

Men perceive humor with an approach of 'darker the better', 'more offensive the better', 'sometimes more abusive the better' and ofcourse 'the dirtier the better'. It’s not that women don’t know that, they can even identify it but they are unable to originally create it and epic for it. It always works on women when it comes to men's sex appeal. After falling for the looks the second thing majority women would look forward to in a guy would be his ability to be funny and use comedy.

Unless we’re talking about the feminist sadists that have a problem for every solution would not be the case. We want our women to be funny, men still think they deserve funny women. Men’s idea of funny women is not somebody who’s cracking jokes all the time, men can actually give liberty to that. Their idea of funny women would be the one who could enjoy or understand their jokes the same way as men would. Most of the married men evolve into sarcastic hilarious characters because their lives had shown them such epic levels of depression that they end up with an attitude of ‘FUCK THIS SHIT’. We don’t see women developing that very often. Sure they would have faced their fair share of depression but they turn sadist more often. Men somehow have the tendency to face these troubles and yet be a part of a comic movement.

The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), the core body of Pakistani doctors, says: “It is alarming to note that a big proportion of our population is suffering from psychiatric disorders, principally depression. The prime reason for this problem may be considered the overall economic, social and political atmosphere of our country.”

It’s not men who associate women with sadism or tragedy. Women just have tendency to enjoy sadism way more than they would enjoy comedy on their own. All men know this as a fact you want to get a girl just make her laugh, because she can’t do it on her own. Even a feminist dude would understand this while a feminist woman might jump out of the crowd yelling 'that’s not true' one can only reply to her with a smile followed by “sit your ass down, you dry delusional mind-fuck you wouldn’t know".

Feminism just didn’t help make women funny. Instead it made women angry which is why they don’t get along very well with sense of humor. Feminist women have the tendency to somehow relate to tragedy and sadism, way more than normal women would and they are force feeding it to the society turning women angrier and less funny. This idea is prevailing all over the world now, no matter how privileged a woman would be she can always choose to be a victim and spread sadism further in society oh and it’s so not funny. Men want their women to be funny they crave that. But women just don’t get it and its getting worse.

Reasoning (bridging rationality and irrationality) Part I

Alfred Tarski was a Polish logician he wrote “Logic is justly considered the basis of all other sciences, even if only for the reason that in every argument we employ concepts taken from the field of logic and that ever correct inference proceeds in accordance with its laws”

To an idea rationality can be a judge with a black robe and a counsel’s wig, and we all know we can’t ignore the judge. A mere idea may not matter enough its application needs to be tested trailed and applied to understand the feasibility keeping existing factors upon a rational approach. The basis of this idea may always lead you to distinguishing well from bad reasoning. Logic fills the gap and advocates a judge’s conclusion.

This practice may lead us to see what we are committed to when it comes to accepting what we take a view of as reason instead of accepting beliefs for which we may lack adequate reasons. There is a need to provide adequate reasoning for which we consider various factors supporting rationality and avoid loosely related statements to discover assumptions.

If our brain reasons based on rationality and irrationality, it should be divided on to the following factors to enhance understanding of human behaviour.

Rational: Logic, nature, science, metaphysics

Irrational: Imagination, emotions, belief, arts and culture

These factors may lead to evolve social structures that can answer contradictions and present solutions for the social problems. The reasoning should be presented as rational solutions to social problems leading to anarchy (solely based on opinions and differences).

To understand and apprehend; sure you need a model. This model should be considered common knowledge, rather something that opens doors to them at a Master’s level. Religion gives a perfect imagination to a child that his irrational brain understands and develop as truth at a very early age. Unlike actual logic and reason, this happens only because rationality is never considered equally important by the society and religion makes sure that rationality does not pitch in. If science and religion don’t get along very well, it is because rationality always falls as a victim to irrationality in a society and does not allow science to implement the logics it concludes.

To implement rationality on an early age it should be injected within a society in a way where it would come to people rather people coming to it without a compulsion to stay intact once proven successful or implementable.

Such laws need to be introduced and kept within a society appropriately with a responsibility to be embraced as common knowledge and not as superior divine truth. It should be introduced as a choice to be embraced and accepted as a life form. Irrational reasons that keep you intact and restricted to information may not fall under justice to the idea of knowledge. It may not be justifiable and may hold more probable chances of deteriorating society (if in power).

On top of it if such irrational ideas set themselves as a compulsion. As a factor of society it may get distorted by the lesser optimistic approaches of creativity, imagination, fiction, emotions and will set an irrationality as common knowledge. Leading to a state where society falls as victim.

Philosophically knowledge should trigger a person's intellect to justify his approach surpassing the contradictions. He may only be able to achieve it once he could be able to deconstruct what is derived using all the prerequisite rational elements like logic and nature etc.

to be continued ...

A rational thought of a Stoic God (philosophy of happiness)

Markus Aurelius one of the most famous Stoic philosophers identifies the idea of God in the Hellenistic period

“If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. But if there are Gods and they are unjust, then you don’t have to worship them. And if there are no Gods then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life, that will live on in the memories of your loved ones”

To understand God we need to understand what the world is like what exists in it. A blend of energies and matter creating life, bound by laws of nature we call force. While energy leads to creating matter that forms the universe. Energies breed life as it is the building block of matter.

Based on these concept things like time, meaning of words, space is dependent on ‘matter’ to exist. Without the existence of matter they don’t really exist, yet links us through experiences and calculates our existence spread over time.

To understand existence and question it, it is important to be a rational thinker. Rational thinking leads to understanding of transforming information to knowledge. If we understand this idea and it seems that we agree to the basic idea so far narrated we can move forward to enhance our understanding of God.

Besides being good and evil, the existence of God remains part of a belief. God is not an entity or has a personality that is outlined by a manual of laws and practices answering our confusions and outlining every human being according to a same structure and instructions over an idea of inner peace. Stoics believe that inner peace doesn’t come through an external source be it God, because a person cannot depend on an external factors for happiness that rests within.

To achieve this self actualization and understanding of God as quoted by many sufi poets as well one must be fully focused on living a good life without boundaries on thoughts. But there has to be a limit on actions and reactions.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

Markus Aurelieus

God is in the universe He is everywhere but He is not outside the universe. He exists among matter and energy, while matter exists on its own due to the energy. So if energy is neither created nor destroyed then matter would also be an infinity and constantly evolving, leading to a force governing the infinite existence of matter. Force also becomes an infinite source but depends on matter while matter depends on energy that exists on its own. Modern religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islamic believe that God exists everywhere (within and outside the universe) which gets contradicted against this argument.

For stoics God is more like an organizing principle that governs all matter and orders even the tiniest event occurring in the universe according to His design. God is less like a person and more like a ‘force’.

Stoics have an interesting idea of the building block of God as matter is broken down into energy. God is broken down or made of ‘Pneuma’ that means Breath. Based on the philosophical reasoning breath is considered a fire element. Stoics believe that every entity in the universe has a limited amount of ‘Pneuma’ in them which allows God to govern all matter. That makes us all a little bit of God ourselves.

“All is one and one is all”

Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)

Since Stoics believe that God is a force and not a personality that bounds the universe by laws through a precise design that we are unable to cheat and/or modify. This makes God maximally rational therefore He orders everything maximally rationally rather ordering irrationally without logic. His laws are not dependent or effected or reasoned by submission. There would be no deviation from a plan so the idea of free will doesn’t really exist or the branching of life either.

In Christianity the word ‘Pneuma’ is taken up as ‘Logos’ meaning an embodied soul of God that explain Jesus as the son of God and shares the importance of breath as breathing life into beings. These were not original ideas that were prolonged and taken up by the modern religions like Islam. When Muslims quote breathing life into dead to make them rise again on the Day of Judgment it is rationally challenged by the Stoic philosophy. Since the ideas were blatantly taken up from previous philosophies to be modified and applied to the then modern societies that didn’t have a background for such an idea.

It is easier to inject an idea among people who don’t know, where people know even a tiniest bit of information can lead to questions that can raise conflicts to the spread of the injected idea.

A rational thinker cannot believe in God, he just has to know it.

One must live a good life, a good life is one that is happy, happiness comes from virtue, happiness isn't pleasure unlike the concept of hedonism or necessarily what we mean as happiness as a personal idea.

The problem arises from the Greek word Eudaimonia. A lot of philosophies have Eudaimonia as an end goal or the purpose of life, it is translated as happiness but more literal meaning can be ‘human flourishing’ it is everything that a good life can consist of. A lot of philosophers concluded the definition of philosophy to be the idea of finding ‘Eudaimonia’ and how to achieve it. For stoics it is finding virtue, the only thing that will always be good, without any qualification or any internal or external factor will be ‘being rationale’ the most important question that remains is

How do we know how to be rational?

That can be answered with depth by the concept of Stoic God. Since God is perfectly maximally rational and we being the bit of God ourselves, we should try to be more like God rather than an influential human figure and eventually we will be rational.

Ofcourse the God we humans are trying to be is not a modern God but rather a logical force governing all matter and energies in the universe. Therefore in accordance with the Stoic philosophy we all have the ability to be rational leading to be virtuous and eventually happy living a good life. All we have to do is to accord our will according to the universe, rather than believing irrationally through submission.