Wat ! U A Muslim

Incident no. 1-Met this girl on my way from Bangalore to Bhopal .Smart and very beautiful .She had this cute little nose which really got me thinking ,is she the one ?? ..Naa just kidding :) ,,Okey so she asked me my name ."Samir" was the reply and then we hit off, clicked really well .We talked n talked continuously for hours . Now as most of you already know , the fun loving ,easy going guy that I am people, generally open up quite easily with me and so did this girl.We chatted and joked about many things. A few of the jokes she cracked were on pakis and in general on Muslims as well.The jokes were light hearted nothing really to feel bad about. So we were cool n went about making a mockery of the other things in the world as well .Had a gr88 time .Then probably just half an hour before I was about to reach my destination she asked me what my full name was , and I told her . The eyes opened wide , the color of the face went red and there was the term "Holy Shit" (that I use quite often) written all over.Her eyes cud not meet mine and for the split seconds they did ,they said how could u not tell me this before.I did what I usually do in such situations, ,quickly changed the subject ...was I angry with her about something? no, not at all .. did I get her mobile no . ? No i did not ,:) not even a few digits.:) Incident no. 2- This incident refers to the time when I met for the first time a girl who was going to be one of my very best friend for a long time. The conversation caught pace and momentum in the same way as in incident 1 the only difference being that we were not in a train but were in a Wipro bus going from home to office.I was talking about how much I hated shopping and was telling her about how I used to kill time when i used to go shopping with my mom as kid.I had certain strange ideas which she found quite amusing .I also told her about the time when my mom was in Bangalore and we went shopping to commercial street. Undoubtedly one the most dread full days of my life.7 hours of non stop shopping..this was first time in my life when I actually started thinking of going legal against my mom for the mental stress and agony she had caused me.:) Well the reference of commercial street reminded my friend of something.She came closer and whispering into my ear said ,"You know wat ,I don't like going to commercial street because there are many mullah kids/guys over there." She had not realised that the guy into the ears of whom she whispered that comment was a mullah himself and probably the only Muslim guy on board that bus. Then eventually when she got my surname ,she showed similar reactions of embarrassment.The poor girl didn't find the guts to talk to me for nearly a week after that. Now if you must have noticed in both incidents referred above I never felt offended or anything and just changed the subject.Why did I do this.Am I a nonbeliever. No of course not.The reason I did not feel bad is because this is how the world looks at Muslims these days.Reasons-one being a chunk of people who call themselves Jihadis and kill innocents and the second being exaggerated negative publicity.Everyday a common man sees on the news channels Muslim "Jihadis" going on slaughtering men ,women and children.Natural tendency is to blame Muslims for being intolerant and Islam for being a violence preaching religion.This is the image one holds of Islam and its followers. I have tried to find the meaning of Jihad on google and the definitions I have found are correct only to a certain extent .

Most go like this �the greater jihad�, a spiritual struggle against the evil within oneself, and a �lesser jihad�, physical effort in the cause of Islam, which is just fine.But none of these definitions outline the rules of the lesser Jihad. They instead start off citing examples of brutalities done by Muslims in the name of Jihad. You would be amazed when I say this but in actuality if there are some who really understand Islam, its a bunch of highly educated Saudi , American and British scholars.Only a few of them are Muslims but these People have spent their lives steeped in the study of Quran.How they interpret the Quran is the way any educated Muslim or non-Muslim would ,if he/she really tried to.I can give you two reasons for this a)These scholars have studied the Quran in and out and understand exactly what the Quran aims to preach.They have not been taught about Islam by an illiterate Maulana Sahab who may have memorised each line in the Quran understands only 30% of it. b)These are highly educated people who have obtained formal modern education from the Oxfords and Cambridges of this world. Unlike you and me they have not built their perceptions by what they have heard from their parents or have seen on TV news channels.Instead they have spent years researching on Islam and its teachings. So if I or you would really like to know something about Islam why not see things as these scholars see it . Below is an narrative of the teachings of Islam as understood by an educated person. Islam is a very simple religion which outlines for its followers only a few duties(5 pillars of Islam) 1)Having Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophet hood of Muhammad. 2)Offering prayers 5 times a day 3)Helping the needy and destitute .(Pre-Requisite :you are well off) 4)Fasting in the month of Ramadan 5)Performing Haj at least once in a life time.(Pre-Requisite:you are well off in terms of health and wealth) All other practises followed are either Hadiths or are wrongly followed.Hadiths are basically a collation of teachings by Prophet Mohamed and tell us the practises he followed to be a good human and hence a good Muslim.These practises are optional. But if you follow them you always end up doing something good for yourself or society.What really needs to be noted here is that these teachings were based on needs or situations pertaining to times hundreds of years ago.In modern times there might be better ways of doing the same.For example the prophet had taught people to be neat and clean at all times .So one of measures was to use the Datoon(small and soft branches of tree (twigs)) to clean the teeth.This was because the datoon was more efficient over the finger when it came to cleaning ones teeth.But looking at this in the current context definitely a pepsodent tooth brush along with tooth paste would be a better option(No Pepsodent is not one of my sponsors).But still you will find ignorant Muslims saying that you should not use a tooth brush but should use the Datoon because that is the rule .They are

wrong,the focus was on cleanliness and not on using the datoon.The prophet had not seen the future and was not aware that the tooth brush was going to revolutionize the dental care industry. Jihad , defined by Wikepedia is as follows �the greater jihad�, a spiritual struggle against the evil within oneself, and a �lesser jihad�, physical effort in the cause of Islam .What I would like to add to this are the RULES that are very clearly outlined in the Quran. 1)Jihad can be declared only by a Koranic Scholar.All Jihads declared in the past few decades have been declared by people who are not even remotely recognized as Islamic scholars . 2)It is forbidden to attack, kill those who have offered no offense. 3)It is forbidden to attack or kill women and children. 4)The warrior must not die by his OWN HAND even though the mission he has volunteered for is a no-return mission.Therefore you don't become martyr blowing yourself in a shopping mall or even a battle ground for that matter.Both the suicide bomber and the mastermind who plans the mission are destined to end up in hell. Note: Jihad is not one of the 5 pillars of Islam .Neither can it be called the 6th pillar of Islam.No one in this world has the rights to amend(add/update/delete) the 5 pillars. So what you see happening around you is not a struggle that is certified by Islam or that helps Islam in any way.It is majorly a struggle for power in parts of the world that lack strong and capable leadership.Politicians of most nations have been doing what they do best by breeding hatred and intolerance amongst the masses. Coming back to the train and bus incident,as i would like to see this :) both girls liked spending time with me when they did not know my real identity.when they got know my real identity both felt embarrassed because they felt they shouldn't have made the statements they had made.But the main point to be noted was this incident would have made them re-build the image they carried of a Muslim .So even though I didn't get a mobile no. I am happy about the fact that I was able to change perceptions . Thanks for reading this.