Converted Muslims and Islam

Islam always needs newly converted Muslims for its rise and revival. The by-birth Muslims are most of the time a threat to Islam's reputation and integrity. In every age, Islam needs to be rescued from Muslims themselves. The reason is that the Muslims misinterpret its teachings and exploit them to get some small benefits. They don't care much about Islam since they are not Muslims by choice in the first place. So, implicitly and unconsciously, these by-birth Muslims hate Islam due to several apparent restrictions on their actions in their lives.
On the other hand, newly converted Muslims are Muslims by choice and they are willing or eager to accept and obey Islamic restrictions in everyday life. These are the people who love Islam in real sense and these are the people who rescue it. If you want to see how Islam looks like and how Muslims lives are, then look at the newly converted Muslims, not by-birth Muslims.

English Translation Yeh Daagh Daagh Ujala by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

On Youtube, I was listening to the popular poem of Faiz Ahmad Faiz. In the comments section, there was a very nice English translation of the poem by Anil Bajpai. I am posting the translation below.

DAWN This tattered raiment of darkness
This sputtering of dawn.
This is not the dawn that we had hoped for.
This is not the dawn we had set out for.
Through the darkness,
Towards the last station of the night stars;
Hoping to find the end of our journey,
Somewhere on the distant shore
Of the languishing sea of night,
Where our sorrow-laden ship
Would at last come home to anchor.
Through youth's warm blooded venues
As we traveled,
Many a hand tugged at our cloak
From beauty`s sleepless abode
Many arms and bodies beckoned us
But very dear was the blush of dawn,
And inviting was the glowing raiment
Of the maidens of light.
Brisk was then the desire
And suppressed entirely the thought of fatigue.
Darkness now has cleaved from light,
We hear.
The Journey has finally now ended,
We hear.
How changed are the rules
For those who have struggled painfully.
Permitted now only is the pleasure
From the delusion of attainment;
Forbidden is the persistent pain of struggle.
Alas!
Though the spark of vision,
The fire raging in the mind,
The heartache, none has dimmed.
From whither came the gust of dawn's breeze,
And where did it go?
The flickering lamp on the wayside,
Does not know.
The darkness of the night has not ended yet.
The moment of liberation of hearts and minds Has not come yet.
Keep going, for we have not come
To the end of our journey yet!

Actions and Responsibility

Taliban are attacking Afghan police and military forces in Afghanistan.
Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are attacking police and military force in Pakistan.
Police and military are usually for protection of common people. But when they are attacked regularly, they no longer remain able to protect common people. Then we see the rise of crimes and other social evils.
Any movement or force who considers fighting with police and military forces bears the responsibility of every crime and social evil after their arrival.
But one problem is that these militants probably don't understand these responsibilities things. They are very simple minded, like zombies who refuse to think and consider the situation.
Most of the time, they have their own agenda and they will do any thing in their power to fulfill the agenda, no matter how many people die. While other times they follow some leaders blindly and do every kind of good and bad works on behalf of those leaders. They don't care who bad their actions are, they just follow the leaders.

Possible Reasons for Innocent Killings by USA

American drone strikes are killing a large number of innocent people in a lot of countries. The reason of the drone strikes is to apparently kill those who are a threat to USA and its citizens. What the Americans don't want to know or acknowledge is that each innocent person that dies in American drone strike has family and friends and acquaintances. They become very upset on the illegal death of their innocent loved-one. And in the process, they stop loving America if they ever were loving it in the first place. They start hating America and Americans. They start to see America and Americans as a gateway of deaths to innocent people all around the world. They start to see that Americans are killing innocent people freely all around the world, because they can, and no one in the world can do nothing about it.

Some of the possible reasons that the American politicians, generals, and policy makers are so indifferent to innocent human lives of non-Americans can be as follows:

• They need to keep the American nation in a perpetual state of war with enemies all over world, to make their media to generate glorious stories of American bravery and heroism.
• They need people all around the world to hate USA so that USA can keep its defense budget high and gives huge orders to its weapon manufacturers.
• American political system is so corrupt that the politicians policy makers do not realize the dreadful situation on the ground due to their actions and policies in other countries.
• American political system is in strong grip of religious and racial extremists who want to conquer the world and are very short sighted to see the longer term consequences of their actions and policies towards their own people, good well, and economy.
• American policy makers see the perpetual war as the only practical way to keep the whole world in a long war and keep them busy and dependent on USA for their defense. 
• Americans see all kinds of long wars as a method to improve their aggressive and offensive military capabilities to maintain its hegemony for as long as possible.

There can be several other reasons the current behavior of American politicians and policy makers when it comes to the world outside USA.

Survival of the Weakest 02

Physical Health of Rich and Poor

Lives of Rich and Poor
Rich people lead their lives in safe and clean environments. They have all kind of protections and high tech medical treatment on their disposal.
On the other hand, poorer people live in relatively unclean environment and they face all kinds of pathogens and get sick all the time. They also lack all kinds of medicines and state of the art treatment.

Fatalities
But the fatality rate of poorer people due to health problems is not very high compare to the rich people.

Under the Hood
When the rich and clean people don't get sick and they are safe from all kinds of less and more dangerous pathogens, their immune systems remain weaker and inexperienced. They develop several kinds of allergies to benign things. Consequently, they become more prone to several kinds of illnesses from the ordinary things all around in natural environment.
On the other hand, the poor people immune systems develop and fight the dangerous pathogens and don't get easily sick, due to early repetitive exposures. They also have least number of allergies and are not threatened by substances commonly found in natural environment.

Struggle in Opposite Direction?
Humans regularly strive to collect as more resources as possible, which apparently increases their survival odds. Apparently, success in this struggle for richness should make people strong in almost all aspects, but on average physically rich people are weaker than the working class poorer people. This phenomena shows more visible drastic results related to survival of rich people compared to poorer people in cases of sudden catastrophes affecting everybody equally, like floods,storms, earthquakes, war, etc.

Wrong Support

Supporting Americans against Afghan Taliban proved strategically very bad for Pakistan. Reasons are as follows:

• During Taliban regime, first time the drugs were completely stopped but American occupation of Afghanistan took drugs production to its peak.
• Western border of Pakistan was safe and quite and there were hopes for peaceful resolution of the border issue during Taliban regime. Now the Western border is very insecure and the region is full of violence.
  
• Taliban had ended support for insurgency in Baluchistan from Afghanistan completely. Americans arrival in Afghanistan started it once again as the terrorists have safe haven in Afghanistan.
• Pakistan provided logistical support to Americans which resulted in the destruction of roads and bridges. Americans remain very reluctant to pay expenses, and even those expenses were named as aid. 
• During Taliban regime, at start when Americans were not too crazy about them, there were prospects of peace in Afghanistan and the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan to their real homes. Now, situation looks dark again.

After Americans run away from Afghanistan, situation there is still not improved. Americans spent trillions of dollars and killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Taliban are still stronger even after death of thousands American soldiers died in action. Americans main focus was on defeating Taliban, not warfare of Afghans which might include cooperation with Taliban. Americans declared Taliban as absolute enemies and there were no compromise on that. Now Americans have learned after a decade of destruction in Afghanistan that talking with Taliban is not a bad idea.

Journalism Then and Now

I am listening to a podcast 375  from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. The skeptic rogues are talking about irresponsible journalism as some journalists had published news reports about published papers with very poor quality. Rebecca Watson at one point says:

The new job description of journalist is not doing journalism, it's selling newspapers.

 This and several other events shows how much unprofessional Western journalism has become. Eastern journalism is also going on the same path as the news outlets are struggling for funding and advertising.
But the sad point is that no more than a century ago, Western journalism was on its peak, and it defined a standard of professional journalism. Even today the textbooks of journalism written in that era heavily focus on ethics and quality of news reporting. Alas, the journalism is spiraling downward with time instead of progressing.