Balkaar

The ritualized slaughter of an animal is not instinctual. Ritual is a uniquely human quality which arises out of our capacity for abstract thought, which is the very opposite of instinct. Swallowing is instinctual. As is having sex, or breathing, knowledge of such things is hard-wired into us by Satguru. We are not born with an innate instinct to ritually slaughter the animals we kill. It is just something Muslims and Jews append onto their killing of the animal because they believe it pleases Allah. Moreover, it is not necessary. The animal can still be killed and eaten without having to go through the laborious process of Halal. Can you say for certain that the Baaj didn't eat meat? Neither of us can be certain of anything in this regard, but my argument here is distinguished from yours in that mine has the evidence of biology on its side. Predatory birds cannot eat vegetables. They would die if they attempted to subsist on carrots.

Yes, I live in the West, England actually. This is the country where I was born and to which I direct 100% of my national loyalty. It has given me all that I have. But I don't see why any of that should exempt it from my critcism. A rather extreme comparison here, but if you lived in Nazi Germany when Hitler was pouring scorn upon the Jews, would you simply forget to take issue with it for love of Germany? The multiculturalism practiced in the West is not as it should be. We live together, we are expected to tolerate one another, but we hardly know anything about one other. We hardly know anything of each other because we can't speak candidly and honestly about one another without being viewed with suspicion of racism. Everything we are taught about Islam in our schools for instance, is especially contrived so that all the horrible things (Doomsayings, threats of damnation, depressing accounts of hell) which spring up on almost every other page of the Koran escape our lens. That, or we are taught blatant lies in order to put at ease the sensibilities of certain Muslims, for instance that "Islam" means "peace to the will of God" when in fact it means "submission", an altogether scarier word. In saying this, I didn't mean to critcise everything the West did. I do not think ignorance is a uniquely Western trait, and I didn't try to say that they were wholly ignorant. I think its tolerably well known that the average Westerner knows a great deal more than most people in the rest of the world. This discussion pertained to Islam, and the Western people are generally ignorant of Islam.

I agree that the ignorant and uninformed people of the West need to be clued in about the messy particulars of Islam, but I hardly think that the best people to disseminate this message are a bunch of gun-toting, dodgy-looking bikers wearing F*** Islam shirts, conservative Christians whose own holy text is riddled with as much questionable subject matter as the Koran. I also agree that people should be able to draw Muhammad if they so desire. However, these draw Muhammad events, supposedly organised in keeping with the spirit of the First Amendment, seem to me to be more about provocation and alienation than a defense of free speech.

What a very weird comparison. The lion eats meat because it must in order to survive, it has no conception of the morality (or immorality, as the case may be) of what it is doing when it is hunting. The paedophile however is not animated by pure instinct in the same way an animal is. The paedophile calculates everything it does, and it is fully aware of how immoral its depravities are, but it goes ahead with them. And while that flowery comparison between human lions (singhs) and actual lions may work in the realm of metaphor, it would appear absolutely ludicrous to any biologist or zoologist. Just try feeding a lion a diet composed exclusively of vegetables, I dare you - you'll notice that the animal will wither away and die in excruciating pain. Just like a cow would if you fed it only meat. Lions cannot digest vegetable matter. Such things are not meant to be changed. Comparisons between humans, who are conscious of their place in the universe, have a grasp of morality, and are therefore able to make moral choices, against animals who lack all of these qualities, are farcical.

Speaking of compassion for prey animals, what of compassion for the predators? If one prevents a lioness from from goring a zebra, then they may well have saved the zebra, but what of the lioness and her emaciated cubs whom they've now condemned to starvation? Humans can subsist on vegetables. Carnivorous animals would die if they tried to. Guru Gobind Singh Ji kept a Baaj and probably also dogs. What exactly do you think they ate, cabbages? The predator-prey cycle is part of nature. Satguru, in his infinite wisdom, has made it so. It is he who commands the lion to savage the gazelle, the animal knows nothing else other than what Maharaj has created it for - to hunt.

No, but that isn't to say that we shouldn't all aspire to be that strong.

If somebody burns a Gutka Sahib, or defiles a Saroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, or otherwise perpetrates some offensive action against our Dharam, then they should be punished. But you can't crack down on someone for saying anything. Waheguru, Sikhs are thin-skinned these days. If your faith in Guru Sahib has any vigor or firmness, it shouldn't be shaken by a few nasty comments. Do you think Guru Sahib is quaking with indignation when somebody criticises them, and needs us, pitiful worms that we are in comparison to their radiance, to defend them? As for the idea of instituting 'harsh laws' against such people, one can only lament the fact that Sikhs are beginning to behave more and more like Islamic fundamentalists.

Abhorrent and laughable news from India, the world's next superpower and the proud nation where people have to be forced to use toilets: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3097640/The-Luft-wafer-Ice-cream-cone-named-Adolf-Hitler-sale-India-sparks-anger-Germany.html Is it any wonder that the Indian state has perpetrated genocides left, right and centre against Sikhs, Tamils, Kashmiris and more, when one considers that they take no issue with snacks, bars and restaurants immortalizing a mass murderer ? Or when her own people exist in such a state of ignorance that they barely even know what the holocaust was, and understand nothing of the nature of genocide? Or when Nazi collaborators like Subhas Chandra Bose are magnified and treated as national heroes?

I misunderstood you, I am sorry.

I think so, yes. Things such as one's cultural outlook/traditions are accidents of birth. I don't believe that a person should allow their views of the world to be determined by something so limiting as geography, something that was entirely out of their hands. One's values should be arrived at through a process of self-examination, not spoon-fed to them on the singular basis that people born in a particular space of land must all think a certain way. These values, derived from honest introspection are, in my opinion, more worthy of respect than hereditary ones. They shall prove all the more valuable in the quest for a common humanity.

So ISIS extending its sphere of influence will ultimately be a good thing in your estimation? In order to achieve your long term objective of stopping people from worshiping at a grave, which as misguided as it is harms exactly no-one, you propose that it would be better for the Middle East to be overrun by monsters who execute people for the slightest trespasses? The only thing ISIS will achieve in the long run will be to accustom the Arabs to horror and violence even more, and further immunize them against it. It can only make the Middle East a more violent a place than it already is.

It sounds a perfectly reasonable proposition to me. For centuries our Sikh Dharam resolutely rebuffed the attempts of the Mughals to levy their Sunni dogma in Northern India. The more impassioned religious believers who wish to impose their religion on others often wish to do so because they believe that these constraints will help people. But you cannot impose virtue on somebody. That rather defeats the point of it. Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji denounced the asceticism of the Sadhus and Yogis, because he realized that denying people something isn't the same as teaching them to resist it. The Yogis who boasted of conquering the baser elements of human nature from their isolated haunts in the forest, were delusional and fatuous. They did not 'conquer' their lust. There simply weren't any women around for them to lie with when they did feel restless. The hermits didn't 'conquer' gluttony. There was just no food for them to eat when their bellies roared. Guru Nanak Dev Ji realized that one had to live as a householder amidst the filth of the world in order to immunize oneself against it. To impose laws forbidding and eliminating certain types of behavior, entertains the very same sort of logic that the Yogi used when he wandered off into the mountains to escape temptation because his inward mettle was too weak to resist it. One's religion, however much significance one invests in it, cannot be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Adherence to a religion is simply a matter or faith, i.e. the choice to believe in something which may not be categorically disproven, but for which there is also no evidence. It is a feeling. A feeling is a highly personal conviction, and as such it is not a suitable basis for the secular laws and rules which govern everybody. Let your beliefs dictate your behaviour (with the condition that you cause no physical harm to anyone else in the things that you do). I assume your question is also meant to cover the realms of offense-giving/taking. I am also of the opinion that people should be free to say whatever they like about one anothers' religions (or lack thereof) without risking physical harm. God hardly needs us to defend him, I think he'll survive a few snide remarks.

I can hardly object to Bhangra on the grounds that its immoral and encourages drinking. Some of the best music in history was midwifed in moments of drug-addled intoxication. The only reasonable ground on which one should object to Bhangra music is that is is mostly a load of monotonous and uninspired garbage. Anyone who would rather listen to Miss Pooja and her unoriginal pseudo-sexy nonsense, than Jimi Hendrix, quite clearly possesses a highly distorted view of things.

And how is this relevant to this forum and my own country England? The war which you propose will be larger than any Middle Eastern conflict that has hitherto been seen, so it is only to be expected that its reverberations will be more pronounced. I've some ideas on what its effects might be on England: 1 - There shall be an up-swell in radical Muslim violence (as is invariably the case whenever the West involves itself in the Middle east) irrespective of whether Britain chooses to intervene in the war or not. If she does not, then shall be accused of being a bystander insensitive to the death of Muslims (as with the war in Syria), but if she does, then she shall be decried by the Muslims and their hardliner left wing apologists as having invaded Muslim soil. The latter seems to me to be the more plausible situation, given that America will almost certainly involve itself in order to safeguard Israel, and where America goes, Britain usually follows. I sometimes feel that Muslims seem determined to find fault in everything the West does in relation to them. 2 - The explosion of radical Islamic and hard left thuggery shall in turn precipitate an increase in goonishness from the far right of the political spectrum. Groups like Britain first shall attract greater and greater support, and shall direct their anger against ordinary, peaceable Muslims, perhaps making them feel unwelcome to such an extent that they too become radicalised (many Parisian Muslims for instance are shaped into extremists due their treatment at the hands of wider French society). The centre-leftists and the liberal leftists, worried by the rise of the right wing, shall feel an urgent need to commit more to left-wing politics in order that the political clout of the left might be greater. Politics in Britain shall become increasingly polarised. 3 - The rise in terrorism/extremism shall provide the government with an excuse to erode the civil liberties of the people, in the name of security (as was the case after 9-11, the originator of modern airport security measures). Tighter security checks will be instituted in more public spaces, and the tedium of travelling through airports will be prolonged yet again. Stupid, pointless rules shall be introduced, not dissimilar to a current one which prohibits you from taking a 500ml container on board an aeroplane, but allows you to take five 100ml containers aboard with no trouble. More rigid censorship shall also be imposed in order than the opinions of extremists not be inflamed any more than they are (the left, ironically, reacts to opinions with which they disagree, with more violence than the fascists whom they claim to oppose). 4 - As you have already pointed out, there shall be influx of refugees into Western countries, probably displaced minority groups such as Afghan Sikhs, Coptic Christians, Maronite Christians etc, but also some Muslims.

Hah! Doesn't it say everything about the wretched state of our Panth, that the idea of a principled and humble Gursikh presiding over Darbar Sahib, as opposed to some shifty political demagogue, is considered to be almost inconceivable? Politicians/representatives are only as good as the people whom they represent. Our people deserve the SGPC and Badal, they are reflections of our own corruption and complacency. If we were truly outraged by them we wouldn't suffer them to preside over us a moment longer. But we've imbibed the cool-aid, we've accepted the SGPC, and the pseudo-politicization of our sacred and inviolate Guru Ghars as a matter of course.

Let these people make their jokes. If we are our Dashmesh Pita's Shers, we can weather their petty insults. Hindus make the Sikhs the butt of their jokes because they are jealous, and deeply unsettled and insecure about their own history, which consists of repeatedly being crushed without having put up any real fight.

The Anglo-Saxons are a Germanic people as well. The Angles and the Saxons both sailed to Britain from Germany. The only people who might truly be said to be natives of this island are the Welsh, and perhaps the Pictish Scots.

May I ask, is this most recent of your comments intended as an attack on immigration? If so, I can't see that it has anything to do with your earlier point. Your first point was that the moral calibre, the trustworthiness, of certain outsiders, is greater than other outsiders, only because the first group of outsiders is a little closer to you than the second. That opinion made no sense at all. And why exactly should outsiders be less trustworthy than insiders in the first place? Some of your Anglo-Saxon brethren would be the first to stab you in the back, and some outsiders would maintain your confidence to the end, if only you gave it to them. I get the impression that you don't, though.

An interesting point. I tried to hint at that in one of my earlier posts, that persecution invoked a deep-seated need to identify as something else, something separate.

Lol, Catholicism is trustworthy because the Roman Church is closer to you? The church which is more concerned with men kissing than with its priests raping the children of their own congregations? The Church which says AIDs is bad but condoms are worse, and condemns millions of diseased Africans to death because of this ridiculous pronouncement? The record of Catholicism is as deplorable as that of Islam. Of all the major religions, it is second only to Sunni Islam in its backwardness. That has to be the weirdest reason for putting trust in anyone that I have ever heard - proximity. Those nearer to me are more trustworthy simply by virtue of the fact that they are nearer ME. There are undertones of narcissism in such an opinion. I only consider a single thing when investing my trust in someone - their trustworthiness.

For those among you who believe that child grooming can only ever be committed by Muslims - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3086387/Girl-victim-Asian-abuse-gang-sex-60-men-approached-Woolworths-aged-just-12.html It would appear the corruption is spreading.

Brahmgiani Sant Baba Nand Singh Ji once removed the dastaar he wore over his keski and laid it out on the ground which Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, being borne aloft on the head of a Sikh, was going to pass over. That may also be said to have been unnecessary, but it was a beautiful sentiment and showed his pyaar. Harman Singh Ji's action was very much the same, it showed his love for humankind.

Of course it was an excuse to enter into the Middle East, but that doesn't mean to say that the American government staged the whole thing. As everyone knows by now, Muslim extremists are quite good at providing people with excuses to invade their countries. Do you seriously think that the most powerful government in the world would organize such a serious thing as this so poorly as to leave millions of people suspecting their involvement? Is there any point in my contesting you at all? Conspiracy theorists are hardly known for receptiveness.

These hair-brained ideas are still bouncing around after 14 years? Urgh. Angry Muslim fundamentalists flew the plane into the buildings. I don't understand why such a thing is considered to be inconceivable by so many.

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