For Vijay: and "old civilizations are not conjured away"!!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Nov 8, 2006 at 07:39

Hi Vijay:

What is also very amazing is that Muslims in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh do not realize that the brand of Islam that they practice is so much the product of their Hindu heritage and I will give you three examples of cultural practices that would be very alien to the Arabs:

1. I noticed that Tablighees and "pious" Muslims from the above countries shave their moustaches and have a beard that they stain with _henna_ and when one asks where does this come from? One is told that this is what Muhammad did (the sunna of Muhammad) but you will never see an Arab with a beard stained with henna. It just looks odd. But if you think about it for a minute (and no I'm not a cultural anthropologist) I supect that the henna stain is the answer to the saffron color of Buddhism/Hinduism.

2. The so called Shalwar Qamiz is a very alien dresss to the Arabs and I suspect that it is the product of the Indian civilization and it was conjured by Muslims in India and claimed to be the way that Muhammad dressed which is another illusion.

3. The hafiz thing: where young men are sent to a madrassa where they memorize the Qur'an. There is no such tradition in the Arab world and I suspect that the origin of such practice is from Hinduism where we have the tradition of Brahmans memorizing the Hindu holy books.

It would be very interesting to conduct a study of the practices of Muslims in the above countries and I can bet you a buck or two that and to use the old saying: "you can take the girl out of Brooklyn but you cannot take Brooklyn out of the girl" in other words: "Old civilizations are not conjured away" not by Islam and not by Arabian imperialism.

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