Books i Regretted Buying/Reading

The Hidden War

Okay, that was a judgmental error. From what I conferred from an overview of the back cover, I thought this book has accounts of a Russian soldier who was there during Soviet-Afghan War and got impressed by Afghans. I bought this book hastily thinking it will tell me more about Afghans and Talibans as this one of my favorite subjects. Turned out, this book is about a Russian soldier recollecting what hardships Soviet troops had to face in that hostile, far-away land. Now, I'm sure it would be an interesting read for someone interested in the subject but for me, probably it was the disappointment which made me put down this book to not take it up again for a long time or forever.

Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

I know what all the Twilight-haters must be thinking. How could I! :D Yes, people! I was a Twi-fan once. Guilty is charged. But i assure you I'm free from that disease now, recovered completely :D So i thought i have read all the four Twi-books, why not read this one as well. What made me curious was its name. I had read about Bree Tanner in one of the books where she was burned. From the book's name, i thought it would be something about how she stayed alive even after the fire somehow and her short life until she was found again and burnt. Instead, the book was about how she was turned into a vampire and her side of the story until her short vampire life was ended when she was burnt. It was just a ridiculous attempt by the author to cash her name and earn a little more with this book, a chapter, she says, lying in her archives. Overall, it was a uninteresting read.

The Forbidden Love

One of friend's say that I'm a feminist when we are arguing about men and women but i bought this book and liked reading Daughters of Arabia by Jean Sasson because Arab countries and Middle East are one of my favorite places and countries and cultures and not because i like to read feminist stuff (I don't because I'm not a feminist). I always want to know more about the Arab world. So the two reasons why i bought this particular book was first, i thought i will find a good love story in it, second, because i thought i might get to know more about Jordan.

Although it wasn't impressive from the start but i read it nevertheless as it is my strong belief that we shouldn't judge a book by reading only the first few pages. So i continued reading it and the story kept unfolding until there came a point where the author started getting blasphemous about how Islam does not do this and that. Though not much of a practicing Muslim, i have a strong, unshakable faith which does not allow me to tolerate blasphemy. It was at this time that i put this book down feeling disgusted, never to take up again.     

Message in a Bottle

I have one word statement for this, Same Old Same Old. Dear Mr. Sparks, an advice: it would be nice if you start writing stories which are not ALL THE SAME PROBABLY!!! The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, all are the same and I'm done reading this author. For a long time i liked watching movies based on his books but not anymore because they offer nothing new. If he were any good, i would have loved to read his other books too. The fact that it was a love story of a middle aged man and woman wasn't much help either.

So here it is. It's not like all the other so many books I've read were all exceptional, but these particular ones were a big no-no.

Protocol

I hate being stuck in the traffic.

Then again, who doesn't! It's like being stuck in the traffic is directly proportional to you getting late from work or university and/or a hot day. However, there is an exception to it.

I don't mind when I'm stuck in the traffic because the roads are closed for some minister or high ranking personnel to pass.

I don’t know why. All the traffic stopped strictly and the road is empty for a few minutes. Three security Pajero’s passes, a Honda, another security car and then you see a Mark II with black windows zooming past, another series of security cars, an ambulance and they are gone. I find the sight of that Mark II very fascinating. The protocol they get, important, authoritative, classy. I say that no matter how much of a corrupt and a lowly hypocrite is sitting in that car and no matter through what sinister means he has reached to this level (because that’s how we generally perceive our politicians to be, I’m not generalizing here), he has earned this protocol where general public is stopped from going on the same roads that Mark II has to pass.

So for a rank like that, i don't mind being the general public. I was talking about this with a friend and he said it’s because I have royal blood running through my veins and I laughed at that :-P I just think it’s fascinating somehow and fascinations doesn’t have to be reasonable :)

Lord of the Rings

Finally! I bought all three parts of Lord of the Rings. I had bought Hobbit years and years ago and I kept it that I will read it when I will have all three LTR books and I got late in buying until I could find it at some cheap rate :P My friends offered me that they can borrow the books from them but I have to own the books I read, hence I waited.

So now that I have bought it, let’s see when I will actually get to read it because I know how much of an amazing read these books will be and I also know that I will have those feelings in greater quantity which I had while watching these movies. Deep, dark, blue, depressing and having-you-bite-your-nails kinna feelings. There is also The Similirion which should be read before both of these. Let’s hope this thought doesn’t grow on me like the one that I have to read Hobbit and LTR together :P

P.S. The fact that I have a lot of unread books lying in my shelf waiting for me to read them, me buying new books quite frequently and me reading several books parallel and letting some stay unattended for long is no help :-)  

Story

Sorry if you can't read the text but this was too cute not to add in my blog

Where There is a Will!

I met an Atheist in my life for the first time in the form of a colleague. It was a shocking experience for me. It's like if you see something disturbing on television, it seems fine but happening with you is an experience you might not handle. Turning from the religion he grew up in, he had become extremely bitter, third form of bitter. He had perfect counter arguments to everything we grew up believing in. And I must say he was good in arguments, I never won. Just like the fact that shorter the circle of a faith, ready and strong their arguments will be. My unconditional belief in my religion never made me think otherwise, blasphemous things that he said.

Once I talked to him something about Quran and I was speechless when he said Quran is just a book written 1400 years ago, for the people of that time, useless in today’s world. And I was speechless because I dint have any argument to counter him. That was because of lack of proper knowledge of Quran though I have recited it all my life. I don’t remember feeling embarrassed then but I’m reading this book, Muhammad (SAW) Prophet for Our Time by Karen Armstrong, where I found a perfect argument and it made me feel this is the thing I should have known then to counter him. And here is the answer to why the 1400 year old teachings of Quran are still as helpful and applicable as that era.

The Quran is the Holy word of God. And his authority remains absolute. But Muslims know that it is not always easy to interpret. Its laws were designed for a small community, but a century after their prophet’s death, Muslims ruled a vast empire stretching from the Himalayas to Pyrenees. There circumstances were entirely different from those of the Prophet and the first Muslims and Islam had to change and adapt. The first essays in Muslim history were written to address current perplexities. How could Muslims apply the Prophet’s insights and practices to their own times? When the early biographers told the story of his life, they tried to explain some of the passages in the Quran by reproducing the historic context in which these particular revelations had come down to Muhammad. By understanding what had prompted a particular Quranic teaching, they could relate to their own situation by means of a disciplined process of analogy.  

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It is like a common sense for a Muslim to know this but it was a matter that I was dumbfounded at such a blasphemy and felt sick that my brain didn’t work enough to counter. Also the reason that he is guy who will never listen to you, no matter what!

I feel light today!

Join the Dots, Make Some Memories

Oh the time when we played this! How we waited for this time with a longing, didn't make the most out of it while we still could and all the little time we spent became sweetly painful memories.

I wait for these times to come again, only when times are even better and happier. How we had to play it silently and laugh silently. How i came to know a new rule which made sense when i thought about it. And i won, yes :-)

A Pity the Fools!

This is the article taken from Wikipedia. While it is nothing against Wikipedia itself, my heart cries a thousand tears reading this. I’m not a good Muslim, knowing all the teachings, I don’t follow them all so I’m not a good Muslim but for something like this, I’m outraged but helpless. It’s like if some effin relative treats me badly, I don’t give a fuck but if they act bad with any of my family members, I can’t do anything because I’m not trained to be disrespectful but I hate them from the core of my heart. Read on and you will know. 

 Everybody Draw Mohammed Day was an event held on 20 May 2010 in support of free speech and freedom of artistic expression of those threatened by violence for drawing representations of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. It began as a protest against censorship of an American television show, South Park, "201" by its distributor, Comedy Central, in response to death threats against some of those responsible for the segment. If only they know why Muslims protested. Maybe their faiths, whatever they are, allows them to make fun of their religious guides, Islam doesn’t. And no Muslim will allow anyone else to do that. Observance of the day began with a drawing posted on the Internet on April 20, 2010, accompanied by text suggesting that "everybody" create a drawing representing Muhammad, on May 20, 2010, as a protest against efforts to limit freedom of speech. You call that freedom of speech or an ultimate act of cowardice?

U.S. cartoonist Molly Norris of Seattle, Washington, created the artwork in reaction to Internet death threats that had been made against cartoonists Trey Parker and Matt Stone for depicting Muhammad in an episode of South Park. Depictions of Muhammad are explicitly forbidden by a few hadiths (sayings of and about Muhammad), though not by the Qur'an. If it isn’t written in the Holy Book, does that mean we can go about doing as we think? This is a level at which no non-believer can reach; shallow as they are, so let’s not hold anything against them. Postings on RevolutionMuslim.com (under the pen name Abu Talha al-Amrikee; later identified as Zachary Adam Chesser) had said that Parker and Stone could wind up like Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot to death by a Muslim extremist, who afterwards pinned a letter to his body with a knife. The individuals running the website later denied that the postings were threats, although they were widely perceived as such.

Norris said that if people draw pictures of Muhammad, Islamic terrorists would not be able to murder them all, and threats to do so would become unrealistic. I’m sorry, is Norris a four year old? With an undeveloped brain? Unrealistic you say? Within a week, Norris' idea became popular on Facebook, was supported by numerous bloggers, and generated coverage on the blog websites of major U.S. newspapers. As the publicity mounted, Norris and the man who created the first Facebook page promoting the May 20 event disassociated themselves from it. Well played! Nonetheless, planning for the protest continued with others "taking up the cause".^[2] Facebook had an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" page, which grew to over 100,000 participants (101,870 members by May 20). A protest page on Facebook against the initiative, named "Against ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day'", attracted slightly more supporters (106,000 by May 20).^[3] Oh, I see how ‘unrealistic’ they have managed to make it! Beat at their own game. 

Subsequently, Facebook was temporarily blocked by Pakistan; the ban was lifted after Facebook agreed to block the page for users in India and Pakistan. Like it mattered! Some so-called Muslims continued using it even during the ban. 

In the media, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day attracted both support from commentators who felt that the campaign represented important issues of freedom of speech, and the need to stand up for this freedom, as well as criticism from other commentators who found the initiative crass, juvenile, and needlessly offensive. Crass, juvenile and needlessly offensive it was!

It’s more than a year now since this happened and there wasn’t a single occasion when my outrage at this thing got milder. I was a Facebook freak, used it almost religiously, regularly, but I deactivated my account on the first day of the ban and never went back. 99% people returned to that damned social networking after the ban was lifted, a big percentage of these people were using Facebook even during the ban. I’m proud to say I didn’t nor ever felt the urge to go back there. I will always…always inwardly dislike the people who are still on Facebook. People kill for the love of religion, bear mortal pain and give away their lives but this was only a tiny test of faith, a very tiny test of faith. And very few Muslims managed to take it. 

I’m not the judge of what’s wrong and what’s right in the eyes of Allah, maybe this wasn’t a big deal at all, but personally, such Muslims are no-good in my eye. These Muslims also include my friends and relatives but it doesn’t make them any less disliked in my eyes. Saying, ‘oh, but we only use it once in a while, almost never’, is a pathetic excuse. What do we use Facebook for? Like we cannot survive if we don’t have a social circle in the virtual world. Weren’t we talking and breathing and happy while there were no Facebook yet? For females, it is just to find guys who find their pictures cute, tell them they love their activities, showoff their activities to their friends, to find a random guy trying to make friends with them. For guys, it is just finding more and more girls, to look at their pictures, flirt and to see more n more girls in their friends’ list to show off to other guys. And if there is any other reason, it more or less comes to the same point mentioned above. To stay informed of others’ activities is same as poking their noses in the lives of people who have allowed it. Something is fun up to the point it doesn't start getting offensive at someone else's expense. Deactivating Facebook doesn’t make me a better Muslim, but it gives me a certain kind of joy that I could show support to our Holy Prophet Muhammad SAW.   

P.S. These are just my views, not necessarily be anyone else's. I cannot do much if anyone finds it offensive, because if they have it, i have a 'freedom of speech' too!