The myth of Islamic power - David Frawley

[rkumar]

The myth of Islamic power

- David Frawley

Background

The following article proposes a new view of Islam that is particularly important for India and for Hindus who tend to over rate the threat of Islam. Hindu fear of Islamic power is a hangover of history, from centuries of domination by Islamic rulers and the violence of the partition of the country in 1947.

On the contrary, I propose that Islam poses no real threat to India in the long run, however many short term problems it may cause. It cannot conquer or divide India further but can only serve as an irritant to delay India from emerging in its inevitable role as a world superpower. In fact, Islam may cause a more genuine nationalism to arise in India to counter its challenge.

Similarly, world Islamic terrorism, however disruptive, is no real threat to world peace. Its level of threat is more like that of an organized crime syndicate than of a powerful nation. There is no real threat that Islam will again become dominant in the world, except as an uneducated Islamic underclass. Rather Muslims themselves are the victims of manipulation, which their backward religion makes them an easy target for both within and outside their own community.

The Islamic Legacy of Defeat

Islam lost its political dominance in the world centuries ago. There have been no powerful Islamic states since the Islamic empires of India, Iran and Turkey entered into periods of extended decline in the eighteenth century. Russia, China and Hindu and British India put an end to these empires and took over most of their lands.

The West thoroughly defeated Islam in the nineteenth century and it has never really come up again. England and France made colonies of the very Islamic heartland itself. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Islamic world was little more than a backward colony of the West that only regained a limited value because of oil resources.

Since the end of World War II when the West gave up its colonies, Islamic countries have only been allowed to develop in a one-sided or dependent manner. This has been helped by the nature of Islam itself, which discourages intellectual freedom. Islamic oil has been a drug that has addicted Muslims to an external source of revenue that has prevented any balanced national development from occurring. The result is that the Islamic world, though superficially in the modern world, actually still resides in the Middle Ages; a fossil frozen in time by the value of fossil fuels!

In the twentieth century, Islamic countries were repeatedly defeated - Turkey by the allied powers in World War I, Pakistan by India and the Arab states by the much smaller Israel. In India, a defeated Islam was given a new lease on life by the policy of appeasement followed by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and their followers. Even this has run its course today, though the Indian Constitution continues to grant special privileges to Islamic leaders at a heavy cost to the people. In this regard, Islamic power in India is more a reflection of Hindu weakness than any real power of Islam today.

Today there are no strong Islamic nations at all. Islamic countries are second or third-rate powers, particularly in the prime Arabic belt from Morocco to Iraq. More significantly, no Islamic economic, military or cultural superpower will ever come into existence again. Islam is a product of the Middle Ages that cannot be successful in the modern world. It is a measure of its backwardness that Pakistan is regarded as the intellectual and scientific leader of the Islamic world.

The Islamic world is fragmented into small countries with limited size, populations and resources. Not a single Islamic country in the world today is self-sufficient even in terms of food and weapons production. The larger Islamic countries, like Indonesia, are peripheral to the Islamic world or only nominally Muslim and they are not well developed either. The more militant Islamic countries, like Iraq or Iran, are still small states and pose a real threat only to their immediate neighbors who are mainly other Islamic countries.

Islam exists in the world today mainly as manipulated and sustained by other powers. Islam is really under the control of vested interests that are non-Islamic in nature. The West has learned to use and promote fundamentalist Islam for two main reasons. The first and most important is as a means of controlling the oil resources found in Islamic countries. The second reason, and now declining, is the use of Islam as a tool against communism by America (though the Soviet Union and China have also tried to use Islam as a weapon against the West).

Islamic Oil: A Curse on the Islamic World

Islam, a medieval religious belief, is artificially kept alive in the modern world by the power of oil money. It is like a patient kept alive by an artificial respirator, who can hardly be called a healthy person. Oil money allows medieval Islamic attitudes and customs to persist in an age where they are entirely regressive. It continues to feed a self-indulgent Islamic aristocracy that was once fed by the booty from jihad. The failure of rich Islamic oil states in terms of culture, economics, agriculture, and education is there for everyone to see. A small, self-serving elite has prospered by suppressing even its own people.

If we look beneath the surface we see that the West controls Islamic oil. Western oil companies operate freely in Islamic oil producing countries and generally run them. Islamic oil revenues depend entirely on the economic prosperity of the West. The western military could take over any Islamic country it wishes, should the necessity arise. Only the politeness of democracy and its honoring of self-determination prevent America from directly taking over such countries as Saudi Arabia today. But America does control such countries indirectly, supplying their food, arms and technical know how, and providing them a military defense umbrella. Most of these oil producing countries would be taken over by enemies from within and without, but for American military presence. So the West occupies them in effect, though a pretence of sovereignty is kept up.

The West, at least from an economic standpoint, may prefer that Islamic countries remain fundamentalist. This prevents Islamic countries from developing the skills and education to control their own oil resources and develop real economic power of their own. As long as the Islamic world is fundamentalist, its oil resources will be controlled by outside forces. The West early on discovered that fundamentalist Muslims were easy to manipulate. Fundamentalist Islam keeps its subjects in a medieval mindset that is easy to subvert. Islamic countries waste their oil revenues on weapons brought from the West, and usually to be used on other Islamic countries in religious wars, or on promoting their regressive religious views by building mosques and printing Korans, not on any real economic or educational development. This assures the West that the Islamic world will never be able to compete with it.

The West has intentionally kept Islamic countries backward and divided in order to control their oil. This divide and control policy was instituted by the British and French after the defeat of Turkey in World War I and continues to this day. The map of the Islamic world as drawn by the colonial powers in 1919 persists today, except for the creation of Israel and Pakistan after World War II.

This does not mean that there is a Western conspiracy to promote fundamentalist Islam. The West tried to secularize the Islamic world but failed, and is still making something of an effort. But the West also realizes that as long as the Islamic world is prone to fundamentalism it should use this fundamentalism to its own advantage. Therefore, the real blame for this problem is not with the West but with Islamic society that is still dominated by the Mullahs and their medieval fatwas.

The Anticommunist Value of Islam: A Thing of the Past

The West also sustained Islam for its anti-communist (anti-atheist) capacity, just as it sustained various fascist dictatorships in South and Central America for the same purpose. In this regard, the West views Islamic countries just as it viewed such fascist countries. It does not really honor Islam, but is simply using it when convenient to another more important purpose.

On the other hand, the communists, though less successfully, have tried to sustain Islam for its anti-Western value, or in India, for its anti-Hindu value. Even the Congress Party in India has cynically engineered many Muslim riots, inflaming Islamic religious sentiments to gain their support at the polls.

Both capitalists and communists have manipulated Muslim groups by appealing to their religious sentiments that are easy to direct towards any proposed enemy and threat to Islam. In this regard, both the West and the leftists have tried to use Islamic countries like a trained dog to attack their enemies. This is probably the reason that the West allowed Saddam Hussein of Iraq to stay in power after his massive defeat in the Gulf War. He could easily have been removed, but was kept on as a potential threat that could be used against his neighbors and encourage further arms sales. ....Cont.

 

[rkumar]

Islamic terrorism in the world today is just a sidelight of this arming of fundamentalist Islam by the West. The most evident example of the American manipulation of Islamic fundamentalism for its anti-communist value was in Afghanistan. The US trained the mujahadin in the tools and strategies of modern warfare in order to defeat the Russians. Now that the Russians are gone, the US has abandoned them and their country. Pakistan and Afghanistan are now at their mercy.

The Islamic World Today

Let us look at the Islamic world today. Iran is leaving the fundamentalist model already, failing to convince even a single generation of its value. Saudi Arabia and the other main Gulf oil states are just puppet states of the USA, with their elite living in a luxury which they have traded for their own freedom and independence. Iraq and Libya, who dared to challenge the West, have been humiliated, have lost much of their oil revenues and are no longer able to really attack anyone. Pakistan, once the darling of the West in its anti-communist crusade, is now in decline, turning into a military and possibly backward religious state like Afghanistan. And the US has looked away to a more economically valuable India, showing that it was only using Pakistan for its own ends.

The West has allowed Islamic aggression in India in order to take the pressure off the Middle East and Europe, where Muslims are kept under control. This is why the West keeps urging India for 'restraint' in dealing with Pakistan and with Islamic terrorism. They want India to keep the Islamic terrorists engaged so that they don't go further west and create trouble in West Asia where vital installations are located. This makes people in India feel an Islamic threat but it is only a side effect of the control and humiliation that the West has inflicted on Islam in the Middle East. The West similarly is pressuring Israel to make peace with the Muslims. But this also is only to guarantee Western control of Islamic oil. While the West controls these countries, it wants countries like India and Israel to appease Islam at least superficially.

Some people, particularly in India, point to the demographic argument. The percentage of Muslims in the country is continually increasing. Islam is also technically the fastest growing religion in the world. This is an illusion. Islam is growing only among the poor and uneducated. The world's intellectual elite is not taking it up anywhere. There is a worldwide creation and proliferation of an Islamic underclass. Muslims have become the underclass of Europe, where they dominate the immigrant labor, and American Muslims are also an underclass, which has mainly Black Muslims converted in prisons. As the underclass disappears with modern education, fundamentalist Islam will also disappear.

The Islamic upper class in India, however, enjoys special legal and constitutional privileges that make it more like an Arab aristocracy. Its members, however educated, have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, which means keeping their community under their power. The result is that Islam remains particularly backwards in India - more so than many Islamic countries - with its Muslims creating their own ghettoes of poverty and lack of education, feeling it to be a religious right to refuse to integrate into the modern world. This is creating a threat of sorts, but not of a great military power, but of backwardness on par with overpopulation and illiteracy.

For the Future

Secular Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia will remain secular. They will either defeat their fundamentalist opposition or throw them off after a short period of rule. Iran is moving away from fundamentalist Islam and will throw off the mullahs within ten years. Pakistan will split up as a country unless it controls its mujahadins. Once it does this, it will gradually make peace with India. Afghanistan may endure several years of violence before throwing off the Taliban, perhaps in a violent or dramatic manner, but this may happen quicker than what has occurred in Iran. Eventually such countries as Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran will begin to return to their pre-Islamic heritages.

Islamic countries that choose to be fundamentalist and who have no oil will return to the Middle Ages - the Afghanistan model. Those that have oil will remain at the mercy of larger Western states - the Saudi model.
The West will continue to control Islamic oil until there is no more need for it. If the Islamic world has not developed some alternative economic means, it will be discarded and forgotten just as Afghanistan after the Cold War and Pakistan today.

The superpowers of the coming century will be the United States, China, Russia and India along with perhaps a united Europe. No Islamic country will be among them. A fragmented and backward Islamic world will not be able to compete with such superpowers, even if it has oil.

For Islamic countries to compete in the coming century, the first priority for them is to throw off Islamic rule, develop democracy and study science. They need to get off of an oil-based economy and develop high tech or other businesses that have value for the future. For this to happen, they have to come out of the Dark Age imposed by Islam, just as Europe had to come out of its own Dark Age of Christianity before it could make any real progress.

The Need to Secularize and Spiritualize Islam

Orthodox Islam is harmful mainly to Muslims. It prevents education, technological and economic development, and social and sexual freedom. It stops Muslims from being able to compete with other groups in the world arena, crippling them from functioning in a viable way in the modern world.

The traditional Islamic model is of church and state as one, with head of army, courts, economy and religion often being the same person and the ideal ruler. Such is a prescription for tyranny and abuse of power. In the Middle Ages, it produced Caliphs who had a religious sanction for massive harems and treasure houses and could send soldiers blindly into battle with the promise of paradise. Such a state has no place today.

Islamic countries will eventually be compelled to accept a new process of secularization and perhaps one of spiritualization as well. Like Christian Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Islamic world will have to undergo an enlightenment, an examination by the rational mind that will throw off the rule of the mullahs and the Koran, just as Europe threw off the role of the priests and the Bible. Like the European Renaissance that went back to pre-Christian Greece to regain its roots, enlightened Muslims will also have to go back to their pre-Islamic heritage and not treat it as a 'Dark Age' as they do now. In reality, what they are living in today is their Dark Age. This process has already begun and will develop dramatically and quickly during the coming century. The reason is that quick methods of modern communication through the Internet and the entertainment media will speed it along. In fact, Islam might fall as quickly and dramatically as communism, at least on a political level.

Like the Christian world today, which is experiencing a new interest in spiritual paths of all types from Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism to a new interest in mystical Christianity, Islam will also have to open up spiritually. It will begin to be receptive to both its own mystical trends like those of the Sufis and to the spiritual teachings of other cultures, particularly Hindu Vedanta, from which the truly spiritual Sufis probably owe more inspiration than to the Koran.

This dual process of secularization and spiritualization will probably not eliminate Islam altogether. Islam will remain as a cultural force but the medieval idea of Islam as the only true faith will disappear, just as Americans honor the Puritans as founders of their country without themselves becoming Puritans today. Mohammed will be recognized more as a great political leader than as a true prophet or spiritual master. As this process occurs, the Islamic world will begin to develop on economic, educational and cultural levels and various Islamic countries may reunite, not under the banner of Islam but under that of regional strength and self-sufficiency. National awareness will come from shared heritage and history, not religion. It is for this reason that in the Islamic world today, only two countries - Iran and Egypt - have a sense of nation, while others are colonial creations. Such countries need to pioneer a new nationalism that no longer kowtows to Islam but recognizes their true spiritual and cultural heritage, including that before the Islamic period.

...........cont.

 

[rkumar]

The quicker the Islamic world accepts this process the better it will be for its people. Muslims have nothing to gain by continuing Islamic orthodoxy than remaining backwards and coming under the domination of other countries. We see the same thing in the Christian world where the more orthodox Catholic countries of South and Central America remain the most backward Christian countries in the world in spite of being rich in natural resources.

Muslims around the world need to realize that they are being duped into remaining backwards by holding to a regressive medieval religion that is against real learning and real progress. They are the victims of priestly domination that has already been thrown off throughout the world and is being sustained by foreign interests as well.

Non-Muslims should cease trying to appease Islam, on one hand, or trying to manipulate Islamic sentiments for their own ends, on the other. They need to inform and educate the Islamic masses on how their own religious misconceptions are preventing them from any real progress, happiness, or national integration. Fundamentalist Islam is more harmful to Muslims than to any other group.

Conclusions for India

Islam has been a military danger for India mainly because of outside support. Only the help of the United States and other countries prevented India from taking over Pakistan in previous wars in which Pakistan was defeated. Islam inside India is sustained by oil money and leftist propaganda or Muslims in the country would have little power. Now that the West is no longer supporting Pakistan, Islamic influence in the region will decline, though it may become extremist along the way, like a tree that is breaking in the wind. The first danger of Islam for India is that the West will continue to divert Islamic aggression to India to remove it from the Middle East, Europe and America where it will harm Western interests instead. Fortunately, this is coming to an end because India is gaining in military strength and positive economic value for the West.

The second and main danger of Islam is the proliferation of an Islamic underclass - backward, uneducated and poisoned with religious prejudices. This is essentially the situation in India today. The backwardness of Muslims makes them prone to manipulation by anti-social and anti-national forces like the ISI. The way to deal with this is through education, particularly through ending government subsidies to Islamic schools, which keep Muslims in ignorance and teach them little of value in the modern world. A nationalist curriculum of education should be followed in all schools that serves to integrate the society. India must recognize the dangers inherent in this underclass, which is often allied to the underworld or criminal side of the country, and work to eliminate it. This is as necessary a policy as building a strong national defense. India must deal with Islam in a strong manner. It is the appeasement of Islam, not Islam itself, that is the real danger in India today.

The saddest thing in all this is that Indian politicians continue to appease Islam as if it were a real force to be reckoned with. They treat the Islamic world diplomatically as if it were a superior, for example, sending only Muslim ambassadors from India to Saudi Arabia so as not to offend Saudi religious sensibilities (though Saudi Arabia as a country has only twenty million people!). It is time to cast off that inferiority complex.

However, the greatest threat for India is lack of unity and national purpose, which Islam can contribute to, but whose real source lies in corruption and anti-national forces within Hindu society (like the Marxist intellectual elite of the country). There is no real threat that Muslims will gain power in India, unless India does not proceed with its own economic and educational development and the projection of a real nationalism.

Hinduism, unlike Islam, is a religion for the future and for all humanity, a Sanatana Dharma recognizing many paths and many gurus, and the rule of consciousness over all. It is in tune with the modern world because it encourages intellectual development and rational thinking. This is the message of the famous Gayatri Mantra.

Promoting Hinduism and Hindu culture is more important than fighting Islam, which is a danger more on par with overpopulation or illiteracy than a real spiritual challenge to Hinduism. So a positive approach is needed. Hindus should recognize that no Islamic power can touch them, if they unite to develop their own culture and spread it throughout the world.

 

[vikramlal]

relevence

raj uncle

i am not going to comment on the length of your post but with

all due respect I fail to see how posting an essay on the weakness of the

Islamic world has anything to do with helping members of our community

which is as you yourself have pointed is the purpose of this website.

Personally I dont think we Hindus should be too smug about the problems

of Muslims. If we take a hard look at ourselves we will find out that in

many ways we are as backward as they are.

 

[rkumar]

raj uncle

i am not going to comment on the length of your post but with

all due respect I fail to see how posting an essay on the weakness of the

Islamic world has anything to do with helping members of our community

which is as you yourself have pointed is the purpose of this website.

Personally I dont think we Hindus should be too smug about the problems

of Muslims. If we take a hard look at ourselves we will find out that in

many ways we are as backward as they are.

Your views are like that of a fish in water who questions how the quality of water is going to affect her life. Jat are not an entity living in vaccum that they need not worry about what all is going on among other communities. Communities and nations who isolate from the happenings around, can never progress.

Yes we are backward because we don't want to learn from the progress of other communities and that again brings to same point you have raised. If other communities' business is none of our business, this is what happens. Taken on a larger plateform now, if China's business is none of India's business, India will never learn and progress. How communities and nations get concerned from happenings among other communities or nations can be seen from the type of debates to which I am giving you the following link;

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2172

If USA is shaken up to the core from the happenings in China, do you think India or for that matter Jats can remain unaffected? If we don't know the mind set of Islamic terrorists, do you think we can progress or deal with them? Or according to you we Jats will never have to deal with all such problems and we will be talking all our life about Gohana type of issues?


RK^2

 

[arunshamli]

raj uncle
i am not going to comment on the length of your post but with
all due respect I fail to see how posting an essay on the weakness of the
Islamic world has anything to do with helping members of our community

waise agar post kee length par comment kiya hota toh shayd mera samarthan aapko mil sakta thaa

 

[sampuran]

Islamic Threat to India

Bhai Saheb. Ram Ram.
That was an appropriate reply. I think we need to get out of this 'Koop Mandook' mentality. The world is too small a place and too well connected for anyone to remain aloof from other people's actions.
Some poor shopper from rural Haryana may not know the full form of LeT, let alone its ideology. But they lost their lives on Diwali eve blasts in Delhi. Should the survivors still keep their minds closed to the terrorist threat ?

US moved most of its manufacturing to China with the aim of benefiting from cheaper costs. Also all the pollution was supposed to affect China. That is resulting in acid rains in Hawai and typhoons for Japan.
Should these people still mind their own business ?

Lesson is simple- Contain the fire in the neighbourhood before it engulfs your house.

If somebody wants to derive pleasure from seeing his neighbours house burning, thats his choice.


As far as the main post is concerned the following excerpts from Sh Praful Goradia's article in www.dailypioneer.com should suffice

"The evening after the bomb blasts took up to a hundred lives in Delhi (October 29), I happened to meet Mr Michael Ismail - a compromise name as a simultaneous tribute to his Christian mother and Muslim father. He is an Englishman and a graduate of Edinburgh University who is on a brief visit to India. My question to him was: Why do not moderate Muslims condemn terrorism, which butchers innocent people? With the combination of his educated English upbringing and his part Muslim parentage, I felt I would evoke an objective explanation.
Mr Ismail's answer was that there can be no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Either one is a momin (a faithful Muslim) or a murtad (an apostate). If one cherishes faith in Islam, humanity is divided between Muslims and kafirs (non-believers). No matter how much one has been exposed to Western or secular thought, in his heart of hearts his instinctive first priority is: On which side of the religious divide a person is? This statement immediately reminded me of Maulana Muhammad Ali's declaration made in 1924 in Lucknow: "According to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Musalman to be better than Mr Gandhi." (Indian Muslims by Ram Gopal, Asia Publishing House, New York, 1959).
If Mahatma Gandhi can be on the wrong side of Allah the Merciful and a fallen Muslim on the right side, where is the scope for moderation?

Threat of Islam to civilised world is real and ever present. It has not subsided in the last 14 centuries, nor it will till they keep looking at 'kafirs' as legitimate targets. So Mr David Frawley is living in utopia if he says Islam is no threat to India.

 

[rkumar]

In my view, most world conflicts have their roots in the events of Mahabharat. A careful analysis of Mahabharat events can be as follows;

1. Army of Pandavas
2. Army of Kauravs
3. Those who did not take part in the war
4. Those who survived

We all know what happened to the surviving Pandavas. However, there is no mention of survivors from the Kaurav side. Though most of Kaurav Generals died in the war, many small generals and fighters must have survived. Did we ever realise where they went and what all they did? Will one expect them to live in peace with Pandavas? Only an idiot will buy such logic. Since Pandavas controlled entire land from Ganga to Gandhar, the defeated Kaurav army was pushed beyond Iran and up to present day Israel. Many went into hiding in the hilly terrain of present day Afghanistan. No wonder one finds Tomars and Dahiyas in present day Israel. Followers of Islam are non other than the descendents of Kaurav who ran away after Mahabharat war and settled in the present day Arabia. This is why if we called our holy books as Puran, they called it Kuran.

RK^2

 

[mbamal]

This is why if we called our holy books as Puran, they called it Kuran.

RK^2

He He..this is the most well thought out piece of work i ever heard...especially the link b/w kuran and puran was just too good....good work Rajendra Jee..!!

 

[vinodks]

Again, that looks like too much of over-interpretation with too many assumptions... Plz provide proofs of such claims... the linguitic connection is tricky business... David Frawley's "The Rgveda and the History of India" talk a lot about geneology of kings and seers and how lineage spread from north India to persia etc... its true that persia was fringing region of Rgvedic culture and people may have gone there after war but these claims should be provided with proofs otherwise you might be spreading misconceptions and some commmon people might take it as truth and spread it further... thats how rumors start.... PLZ resort to proofs if any historical statement is made.

BTW I favor posting of original article.

-Vinod

Only an idiot will buy such logic. Since Pandavas controlled entire land from Ganga to Gandhar, the defeated Kaurav army was pushed beyond Iran and up to present day Israel. Many went into hiding in the hilly terrain of present day Afghanistan. No wonder one finds Tomars and Dahiyas in present day Israel. Followers of Islam are non other than the descendents of Kaurav who ran away after Mahabharat war and settled in the present day Arabia. This is why if we called our holy books as Puran, they called it Kuran.

RK^2

 

[rkumar]

Again, that looks like too much of over-interpretation with too many assumptions... Plz provide proofs of such claims... the linguitic connection is tricky business... David Frawley's "The Rgveda and the History of India" talk a lot about geneology of kings and seers and how lineage spread from north India to persia etc... its true that persia was fringing region of Rgvedic culture and people may have gone there after war but these claims should be provided with proofs otherwise you might be spreading misconceptions and some commmon people might take it as truth and spread it further... thats how rumors start.... PLZ resort to proofs if any historical statement is made.

BTW I favor posting of original article.

-Vinod

Do you think everything in science is based upon hard proof and there are no assumptions? Even our so-called physics is based upon few assumptions for which there are no proof. Reasonable assumptions can be as good as proof.

We tend to argue in Physics that all elements have been derived from the Hydrogen atoms widely distributed in space, but seem to have no clue about the origin of Hydrogen atoms. In the absence of any proof about the origin of Hydrogen atom, don't you think everything else is based upon just assumptions and not on proof? Then we talk of matter and energy without knowing much about the exact conditions existing at the interface of matter and energy.

Who says that linguistic connection is purely a trick? York in UK and New York in USA are not connected by some tricks. If Tomars of Israel and India are connected by tricks, so are the Rathis of UP and Haryana in that case. Dahiya's great grand children born in USA could not be called to be connected by tricks to Dahiyas in Sonepat after 1000 years.

Migration of living being can be traced through cultural and linguistic means and now by genetic means. Hope you know just recently they found Jews even in North East India. Till few years back no one could believe about that. Israel is accepting these Jews back.

RK^2

 

[vinodks]

Uncleji, you missed the point.... but don't worry, keep the good work up!!!
Linguistic similarity has many other ways to propagate rather than physical migration of people... assumptions in Scientific theories and blind shot for Kaurava's migration to Iran is quite different..
But its alright.

-Vinod

 

[rkumar]

Linguistic similarity has many other ways to propagate rather than physical migration of people...

Answer: Give me some examples of above.

assumptions in Scientific theories and blind shot for Kaurava's migration to Iran is quite different..

Answer: Why two yardsticks? If hardcore science can be based on pure assumptions ( I suppose reasonable), why can't social sciences be based upon reasonable assumptions? If men could originate in Africa and find its way to all over world including India, why can't he trace his steps back to the present day Israel and Arabia? Very few of us have details about our forefathers even beyond 10 generations. Does that mean we were born out of nowhere?

RK^2

 

[vinodks]

Will type David Frawley's relevent paragraph tonight.. right now I am in school...

The proof of absence of something is not proof of presence of the opposite thing.
I agree with your general ideas but I just had objection of your conclusion that Kauravas migrated to Iran... and your "In my view, most world conflicts have their roots in the events of Mahabharat."
Man originated from Africa and migrated all over the world, true. Lots of genetic study is on the way(like Spencer, am currently reading his book, the signature if from that, it's satire on importance of male's Y-chromosome in history becuz thats how they could map migrtions). But thats digression.

BTW Frawley's new name is interesting, Vamadeva Shastri

Chilll!!!

Vinod

Answer: Give me some examples of above.

Answer: Why two yardsticks? If hardcore science can be based on pure assumptions ( I suppose reasonable), why can't social sciences be based upon reasonable assumptions? If men could originate in Africa and find its way to all over world including India, why can't he trace his steps back to the present day Israel and Arabia? Very few of us have details about our forefathers even beyond 10 generations. Does that mean we were born out of nowhere?

RK^2

 

[arunshamli]

Mahabharat

We all know what happened to the surviving Pandavas. However, there is no mention of survivors from the Kaurav side. ..... Did we ever realise where they went and what all they did? Will one expect them to live in peace with Pandavas? Only an idiot will buy such logic.

Mahabharat does talk about the survivors of kauravas. After the war only three kaurav warrior were left
1. Kripcharya
2. Kritvarma
3. Ashwathama

Ashwathama killed Dhrist-duman and all of the Draupai's son while they all were in deep sleep and he set fire to the pandawas camp. yudhisthir and uske bhai bach gaye...fir in logon ne Ashwathama ko pakad liya thaa lekin jan se nahi mara...woh sharam ke mare fir himalya par chala gaya tha..and he lived like a sanyasi there for all of his life.

Kritverma lived with Sri Krishna in Dwarika and died there.

After the war Udhisthir became the king. Dhritarashtra and Gandhari lived with them for next 15 years, Kripacharya also decided to live with old Dhritarashtra. After 15 years Dhritarashtra decided to go to the jungle as it was a tradition in those days to go to jungle after the retirement. So Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti spent next three years in the forest. Sanjaya was with them. fir ek din jungle me aag lag gayi and Dhritarashtra told Sanjaya: "This fire will envelop us all. You had better save yourself." Saying this, the blind old king, Gandhari and Kunti sat down on the ground, the three of them, facing eastwards in yoga posture and calmly gave themselves up to the flames. Sanjaya, who had been to the blind king, throughout all his days, his only light and was dear to him like life itself, spent the rest of his days in the Himalayas as a sanyasi.

So if Dhritarashtra (who was the father of kurus) himself lived with the Pandawas for 15 years, why could not all other kurus have lived in pandavas kingdom? aur haan....ek baat aur, Dhritarashtra did not live as a war prisoner, he lived there by his own choice. and Udhisthir used to consult him in all of his matters before making any big decision.

Since Pandavas controlled entire land from Ganga to Gandhar, the defeated Kaurav army was pushed beyond Iran and up to present day Israel. Many went into hiding in the hilly terrain of present day Afghanistan.

As per Mahabharata Dhritarashtra, Yudhisthir etc were chakra-vrati king and chakra-vrati means the king of the whole land. iske alawa aur bahoot se chote chote king hote the...lekin woh sab chakra-vrati king ke liye kam karte the. Its like we have one prime minister and many chief ministers in todays India. That is why all the kings were involved the the mahabharat war. nahi toh kisi ko kya jaroorat padi hai kisi ke ladai me padne kee.

Yudhishthira became the king after the war. and he was the king of the whole land, so there should be no question fo some one hiding to some remote place. Sari dharti unki thee toh kahin se bhee dhundh nikla sakte the.

This is why if we called our holy books as Puran, they called it Kuran.

Vedas are the holy books of Hinuds and not puran. only few people believe in purans and whereas vedas are respected by many if not all.

 

[kharub]

Respected Uncle ,

i didnot bother to read all the comments but just the initial few .........

and i would like to say that some people have such small brains, that they just cant appreciate a good analysis and intellect

(not that i am a genius myself .. but at least i can appreciate enlightning work)

I have been thinking about this issue myself alot and discussing it with a lot of my friends who happen to be Arabs living in Australia.

And what an excellent analysis you have presented ........ just brilliant .....

But i think the short term dangers of extremist Islam are far less discounted ... as they pose a serious threat to individual freedom and societal fabric of multi-cultural societies like India and the western world.

 

[vinodks]

RKji,

Not in spirit of opposing but in healthy spirit of discussion, here it goes.

I exaggerated in statement "Linguistic similarity has many other ways to propagate rather than physical migration of people... " so I slightly change my previous statement to this "Linguistic similarity is very weak argument to support nature, timing and directions of physical migrations of people..."

Frawely says "Without verification by other sources linguistic arguments can not carry any weight at all."

Languages are most obivious thing to be noticed and it's the first thing early colonial thinkers observed and gave theories. But these days people are relying more on archeological, climactic and genetic proofs and then verify with languages. It could have been true that Aryans went in East Europe and settled. Actually some arguments support that.

I don't say langauge can spread without migration. But similarity of words doesn't say anything at all about direction(unless you see gradual change in language with geography) and time of migrations.

So the claim that Kauravas went to Iran requires other proofs then just "Tomar" and "Dahiya" names. Some words like "mother, father, brother etc. along with less obvious and exotic words" are very ancient becuz these are most necessary words to be used in tribal societies even before the scripts developed. These words remained almost same for thousands of years.(Like everyone knows, Mater(Latin), Maatr(Sanskrit) and Mother(English)).
So migration argument based on similarity of words applies only in case of migrations after the word is invented or frequently used. Even if there is migration for langauge to spread, you don't know when it happened unless you know when that word was used first time. Words are found in written literature not in archeological remains. But spoken words were there much before scripts. So language and people might have traveled much before than we think.

Everyone agrees with migrations in antiquity. I also do. Indo-European people were spread over India, central Asia and Europe which is evident in similarity in languages. Similarity in language doesn't say anything about direction of migrations. There are 443 Indo-european languages in total, mainly English, French, German, Portuguese, Hindi, Italian and Spanish and among ancient languages as roots Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian. But problem comes when you take in to account Dravidian langauges, which are not Indo-european by their structure even though there are some common words. How come two regions so far away like India and Ireland have language of same family but South and North India, being so near, have languages of different groups.

Indo-european languages are "inflected" while Dravidian languages are "agglutinative". Interestingly, Finnish, Hungarian, old Bulgarian, Turkish, Mongolian and Japanese share same broad group as Dravidian. And these regions are separated by region of Indo-european people. People tried to justify these connections by Dravidian migration theory which can be easily refuted by simplest arguments.

Vinod

Linguistic similarity has many other ways to propagate rather than physical migration of people...

Answer: Give me some examples of above.

RK^2

 

[rkumar]

RKji,

Not in spirit of opposing but in healthy spirit of discussion, here it goes.

I exaggerated in statement "Linguistic similarity has many other ways to propagate rather than physical migration of people... " so I slightly change my previous statement to this "Linguistic similarity is very weak argument to support nature, timing and directions of physical migrations of people..."

Frawely says "Without verification by other sources linguistic arguments can not carry any weight at all."

Languages are most obivious thing to be noticed and it's the first thing early colonial thinkers observed and gave theories. But these days people are relying more on archeological, climactic and genetic proofs and then verify with languages. It could have been true that Aryans went in East Europe and settled. Actually some arguments support that.

I don't say langauge can spread without migration. But similarity of words doesn't say anything at all about direction(unless you see gradual change in language with geography) and time of migrations.

So the claim that Kauravas went to Iran requires other proofs then just "Tomar" and "Dahiya" names. Some words like "mother, father, brother etc. along with less obvious and exotic words" are very ancient becuz these are most necessary words to be used in tribal societies even before the scripts developed. These words remained almost same for thousands of years.(Like everyone knows, Mater(Latin), Maatr(Sanskrit) and Mother(English)).
So migration argument based on similarity of words applies only in case of migrations after the word is invented or frequently used. Even if there is migration for langauge to spread, you don't know when it happened unless you know when that word was used first time. Words are found in written literature not in archeological remains. But spoken words were there much before scripts. So language and people might have traveled much before than we think.

Everyone agrees with migrations in antiquity. I also do. Indo-European people were spread over India, central Asia and Europe which is evident in similarity in languages. Similarity in language doesn't say anything about direction of migrations. There are 443 Indo-european languages in total, mainly English, French, German, Portuguese, Hindi, Italian and Spanish and among ancient languages as roots Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian. But problem comes when you take in to account Dravidian langauges, which are not Indo-european by their structure even though there are some common words. How come two regions so far away like India and Ireland have language of same family but South and North India, being so near, have languages of different groups.

Indo-european languages are "inflected" while Dravidian languages are "agglutinative". Interestingly, Finnish, Hungarian, old Bulgarian, Turkish, Mongolian and Japanese share same broad group as Dravidian. And these regions are separated by region of Indo-european people. People tried to justify these connections by Dravidian migration theory which can be easily refuted by simplest arguments.

Vinod

Agreed. Let me begin with few examples before I stretch my arguments further.

1. People usually keep their surnames even if they chance religion and nationalities. Take the case of Bobby Jindal in USA who was born as Hindu and converted to Christianity. I am very doubtful that is practicing Indian culture any more. Even if he is practicing to some extent, his great grand children will certainly not be. Think of his descendents after, say 500 years. Will there be anything left other than say their surname? If that’s the case, how can we not follow the same logic with Tomars and Dahiyas of Israel?

2. Let us now move over to West Asia. There are many towns, which have same names as Indian towns. Customs of offering Haz are very pre-Islamic and similar to Indian customs. This cannot happen without deep cultural links and two-way traffic over centuries. Distance between North Indian towns of Punjab and west Asia are shorter than even to those of south India. If persons like Guru Nanak could establish a Gurudwara in Baghdad and travel to Mecca Medina, why could not same happen with people during Mahabharat or Ramayan period when civilisation was so advanced. If there can be Rameshwaram 1000 miles away from Ayodhya, why present day Ramallah in Palestine could not have been Ramalya by same logic? We know that Luv Kush had their major power centre in present day Pakistan which equidistant from, let us say Bihar and countries like Iraq and Palestine.

RK^2

 

[vinodks]

Surnames also change with religion if not in first, atleast in 2-3 generations. You can take survey of Goan Christian surnames....

I won't say anything about Jindal and Haz becuz its not the point of argument. Islam has many thing which are Arabic, pre-Islamic... so what?... Does that prove that Kuran came from Puran?...
My distance argument applied in cases like India and Ireland, Germany etc... not middle east... I agree Persia was fringing part of Vedic culture... I don't doubt that... but its not physical distance, its desert and arid mountain ranges (Hindu-kush(aha luv-kush)) in west pakistan... BTW Indus-Saraswati civilization was in present pakistan and haryana not in Bihar... but anyway I don't doubt migrations... I just had objection with language part...

Anyway, I think I made myself clear...

Thanks
Vinod

Agreed. Let me begin with few examples before I stretch my arguments further.

1. People usually keep their surnames even if they chance religion and nationalities. Take the case of Bobby Jindal in USA who was born as Hindu and converted to Christianity. I am very doubtful that is practicing Indian culture any more. Even if he is practicing to some extent, his great grand children will certainly not be. Think of his descendents after, say 500 years. Will there be anything left other than say their surname? If that’s the case, how can we not follow the same logic with Tomars and Dahiyas of Israel?

2. Let us now move over to West Asia. There are many towns, which have same names as Indian towns. Customs of offering Haz are very pre-Islamic and similar to Indian customs. This cannot happen without deep cultural links and two-way traffic over centuries. Distance between North Indian towns of Punjab and west Asia are shorter than even to those of south India. If persons like Guru Nanak could establish a Gurudwara in Baghdad and travel to Mecca Medina, why could not same happen with people during Mahabharat or Ramayan period when civilisation was so advanced. If there can be Rameshwaram 1000 miles away from Ayodhya, why present day Ramallah in Palestine could not have been Ramalya by same logic? We know that Luv Kush had their major power centre in present day Pakistan which equidistant from, let us say Bihar and countries like Iraq and Palestine.

RK^2

 

[rameshwarsingh]

I see a lot of danger to India due to ismalic terrorism

Shir rajenra Kumar Ji
Almost every hindu (not every Indian) is today worried about ismalic danger india is facing. The ismalic terrorists are getting outside support. You have rightly written that India is gaining military strength but Government’s weak foreign policies do not allow our military to take stringent actions against terrorists. India’s lengthy and weak judicial process motivates terrorism to continue. Indian population is at high alarm and this is because followers of islam do not follow family planning. Their increasing population has led state and central govts to make pro-islam policies. Despite of illiteracy and poverty, islam is winning because all govts are blindly supporting them. Although there may not be any danger globally due to islam, as you wrote in your thread, I see a lot of danger to India. Not only intruders form other countries, our own Islamic followers support ismalic terrorism. They easily agree to give shelter ti terrorists. Let me give some example. At the time of kargil war, Pakistani flags were hosted in Aligarh. This is common happening in India that whenever pak wins in cricket, sweets are distributed in muslim dominating areas. This is high time to think our role to save Hinduism as well As India.
rameshwar