The Ancient World is Stirring Again

A thousand years ago, when I was a kid of eight or nine, I discovered the wondrous world of high fantasy in Urdu. 

I still remember I had a birthday party. I was in class two (I refuse to say 'grade'!).  A friend brought me a 5 rupee children's book about a boy who had magical powers bestowed by one 'Bandar baba', the Monkey Man, a dervish living in a tiny hut deep inside a mysterious jungle. Subsequent to that bestowal, the boy, ten years old himself, could fly in the air, walk on water, fight off evil creatures and dark magicians, and was accompanied by a girl witch. The boy of course was Chan Changloo, so called because when he walked he would produce the sound of tinkling bells from his toes, a reminder on each step that these powers be used for the goodness of mankind. And the girl's name was Shamli. This was a series of children's books written by one Mazhar Kaleem, MA. The same man who was (and probably still is) the most popular torch-bearer of Ibn-e-Safi, the legendary Urdu Spy fiction writer. Imran Series lives on through the pen of Mazhar Kaleem, as millions of Pakistanis know quite well.

That little book was the beginning of my life as a writer, because each night I would enact magical plays and moves in my head and direct and screenwright multiple adventures. Chan Changloo, Tarzan, Chalosak Malosak, Umar (oo!) Ayar, and multiple characters either created or propogated by the hands of multiple writers and publishers, most notably Mazhar Kaleem MA via Yusuf Brothers Publications in Multan were (and sometimes in the dark moments of the night still are) more real to me than anything else happening in my nerdy little life. There would be book exchanges with cousins and friends, piles and sackfuls carried to and from Ravi Road and Allama Iqbal Town, Lahore, and I still remember the excitement in my heart as I would sit in the backseat of my dad's car, looking forward to readig those adventures. Such was the beautiful, innocent reality of my childhood friends and assets.

One of the greatest high fantasy dastans though that captured me for years to come was that of Amir Hamza and Talism Hoshruba. These tales are the Urdu equivalent and, if I may, superior of the Alif Laila (A Thousand and One Nights). They are perhaps the longest epic tales ever written in the history of mankind, passed on orally, oratorially, told and retold in courts of Moguls, the streets of IndoPakistan, to beggars and to emperors, in a day when days were long and the world was vast, mysterious, cruel, but beautiful. 

All my life, I have defined myself as a writer. Medicine is my work and my humbling. Writing is my spirit and my fumbling effort to be taller than my five and a half feet. I have lamented all this while the disappearance of Urdu as a medium of magic in childhood. I have wept at the religiopolitical terrorism going on in my country, inflicted at my people, but I have also sighed at the praise showered upon Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, while Hamza and Amar Ayyar sit in a corner, pale and silent like ghosts of dreams past.

Then something happened. 

Someone got tired of his own tears and lamentation, someone stronger and more wilful than I will ever be, and penned the translation of the original Dastan-e-Amir Hamza. He sat down, and scribbled line after line, till his electronic quills were drenched with the sweat and blood of his toils, and thus was born The Adventures Of Amir Hamza IN ENGLISH. 

Finally, the manuscript that was dying away, that dust was laying a pale film of claim upon, that the monopolising tyrants of English had strangled and almost choked, rises back into the limelight, fresh and gleaming, like a baby pheonix, like Zeus from the cobbled lava of the sun, like Lazarus himself called back from the dead.

It is to Musharraf Ali Farooqi's credit that he spent years on this labor of love. Who can imagine the long stretches of time, the days and works of hands that rustled on paper, determined in their love for a lover that must have seemed so completely out of reach in this world of iPods, iPhones, ebooks, Eragon ( a wretchedly ill-writ novel by the way in my humble opinion), Potter and LOTR? Who can imagine the self-doubt, the exhaustion of trying to bring a dying world back to life? 

I can...and so can millions of others who must be out there, lovers of Urdu and Urdu literature. 

But I can't do what Mr Farooqi did. He did it! Dastan-e-Amir Hamza and Talism Hoshruba gleam on the bookshelf in your nearest bookstore, the former actually published by Random House. 

Musharraf actually gives a fascinating history of the dastans in the beginning of each series. The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a single volume of almost a thousand pages,a  feat of marvel and love and beauty. The Hoshruba series, so I hear, will be a 24 volume series, the longest epic, the most comprehensive saga of magic and mystery in any language in the world.

To anyone who is lucky enough to be able to buy and read both epics, please pass this on. The ancient world is stirring again, the lights in Hogwarts dim, while the torches in Parestan and Mount Kaf whoosh into existence.

Amir Hamza and Amar, undying friends, stand now, smiling upon millions and millions of Urdu-reading souls that ever lived in the last 200 years. They look tired and a little old, but Hamza's mighty steed and Amar's lightning speed whiz by us. The Invisible Cloak and the Neverending Satchel lie in old, skeleton hands, gleaming like Aladdin's lamp.

Welcome to two hundred years ago!

Out of the void...

I have lost words to write.

1 yr and 3 months. That's the time period after which I'm writing anything. Much has happened in between. I once listened to someone say that youth goes fleeting by, but old age lasts forever. It is true. So much has happened in the interim since I last wrote anything on this blog.

I am married now...happily. Much much happily alhamdulillah. Junaid and I are almost at the end of the second yr of internal medicine residency. Moiz will finish his intern year in medicine soon. Murtaza and Uzer are well set in their surgery residencies. Fawad, Mujtaba and Hussain while the time away happily and busily in theri respective medicine programs. Bubloo sahib matched in Family practice, something he wanted to do. Mak, so I hear, matched into medicine as well -- I am yet unaware into which program. Kashif works away hard at his neurosciences PhD. It seems all my AKU friends are finally well set and on solid ground as far as their career is concerned. 

Oh btw, in case no one's heard, Moiz and Hasnain got engaged. TRUMPETS!!

I sit comfortably in bed. My wife's studying in the living room. She has a quiz tomorrow. The night is atremble with the sound of heated pipes. My pager sits blackly next to me. I'm on backfloat. Just today, I wrote an email to a very nice physician recruiter from a hospital in Bradford, Pennsylvania, declining their offer to join their hospital as a traditional internist; Unfortunately, my wife's intended school is quite a aways from the hospital. However, I do have a couple of nice J1 visa waiver job offers.

Yet, my heart is silent and a little cold. 

Could it be the bomb blast that killed a constable in Islamabad today? Could it be that the very smells of a Pakistani market with its dust and chickens and old festering fruits is slowly fading from my nostrils and my memory? 

I can't feel Lahore anymore. It once used to live under my skin, in the cage of my bones.

I can't write anymore. Medicine residency and a new marriage can take their toll on your time and priorities. I haven't written much of anything, let alone thought about publications or creative fountains. 

I need to study more too.

As you can see, my mind is a labyrinth, meandering and hazy. I did both renal dayfloat, a rehumatology consult, and saw six patients in my own clinic. That is enough to distract any man from his aforeset task in life, bestowed upon him by the great and blind god Cthulho. Now, come on, that's funny!

This post is a mirror of the maze in my mind.

I think I will be okay though in the long run. 

The Boogeyman aka Islam

In the heart of darkness, there throbs the life of hope...and no, no sexual innuendos are being made here.

There is a current current running through the crevices of Islam. The word, Islam, is taboo. And, as we all know, taboo is anything feared and least likely understood. If one wishes to examine the roots of that fear, one must trace its steps back to the World of Islam, a religiously bound geographical entity that stretched its wings from the sands of Arabia to the Rock of Gibraltar a thousand years ago. This is the time even before Baghdad University (Al-Nizammia-al-Baghdad), which was the Harvard of the medieval world, one of whose professors was Ghazali himself.

Medieval Christianity feared and hence hated Islam, mislabeling and misinterpreting a religion that derives its roots from the very word ‘peace’. Mohammad thus became ‘Mahound’ and in some versions ‘man-hound’, and Islam became something that was spread at the point of sword. History is written by he who writes, and is written in a certain language. Our history was miswritten by the West, and indeed in the great classic, La Divina Comedia, ‘The Divine Comedy’ by Dante, Mohammad (PBUH) is to be found in the last circle of hell, his body being cut in two halves, because he allegedly separated brother from brother. How ironic, misinformed and Middle-Agedly prejudiced, since Mohammad’s last speech declares each human being brother to another, with nothing but piety elevating any rank whatsoever.

So our history was written by either the West or highly qualified Muslim historians, but in Arabic, Persian and much later in Urdu. All three of these languages have been lost over the last hundred years, a deliberate effort by Lord Macaulay in his Minute on Indian Eduction, where he tries to prove that ""The languages of Western Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar ... We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."

As a direct consequence of the implementation of this classic British cultural imperialism in 1835, educational Madrassahs where mathematics, poetry, science, astronomy, numerology, Sufi treatises and other eastern sciences were taught were shut down, leaving in their wake English as the primary language of imparting education. No doubt that has helped round up the globe even tighter into a village, where cultural terrorism goes ignored and suicide bombing becomes the clamor of the day, notwithstanding the fact that those very Madrassahs, that allegedly produce these terrorists, were encouraged by the British to strictly follow curriculums devoid of any objectivity, science, art, or culture, leaving religious teaching stripped of its holisticity, barren of aspiration and change, immersed eternally in fixed stangnant ideas taught by mullahs who have never opened Ghazali’s Mishkat-ul-Anwar (The Niche for Lights) or Ibn al-Arabi’s Fatoohat-e-Mekki (The Meccan Revelations).

We all die when we are born. It is all just a matter of time. Sometimes though, we have a chance at eternity, a shot at glory. Our glory is and will be the end of religious insanity. Religion is passion liberated: it is pain silenced and internalised till it begins to open hidden doors. We must begin once again by reaching for Ahad, Unity. Unity in thought, action, and knowledge. A fusion of western and eastern sciences must take place, where we learn the arts and science of not only medicine, but of politics, culture, literature, music, and social infrastructure. We must take all this training, if we do go back, which should or at least could be an idealistic aspiration, and use that to improvise unto a local colour the art of living. If knowledge is power, there must be no greater war than for knowledge and that too should be fought with our own selves first. There must be no blood spilt but ink in this fight. If freedom of expression means the Mohammaden cartoons can be published, we must also agree that London-based historian David Irving and Australian scholar Dr. Frederik Toben, two men who state that much of what is said about the Holocaust is exaggeration, must also be allowed to express their views in the interest of ‘freedom of expression’. There must be no prejudice then in the expression of truth. We must remember that if we are to fight, it must be a fight armed with peace, culture, and justice. A man once asked Abu Hafs al-Haddad, a Sufi contemporary of Junaid Al-Baghdadi, what justice was. He replied, ‘it is acting justly towards others and not seeking justice for oneself." I do understand that too much of a good thing in this case would make one apathetic or worse a coward, but it must also be understood that there is a time and place for everything. Our time demands the most of this advice. In times of prosperity, this is good advice. In times of a wretched posterity, it is indispensable.

Let me conclude by quoting the First Commandment of God to Mohammad. It was not Off to Jihad! It was not Declare that God is One or that Islam is the only religion to be followed. It was not about the permissibility of music or the keeping of a beard.

It was one beautiful, simple word: Iqra -- Read!

Within books lies salvation.

A whirlpool called Ahad

I know not love.
I have never loved one
without my self.
That may mean I just might be
more accursed than I think.
And that, dear friends and all,
is a scary thought.

Does hell exist or heaven?
I’ve seen enough to know
we can create our own of either mode.
But if they exist,
they need not my approval.
They will exist
without my earthly stamp.

God lives in me.
I live in Him.
It is only a matter
of death and design.
In the whirlpool called Ahad
We All come together.

I rip the heart of an atom out.
All that spills out is the blood of the sun.
I trip and fall across the aeons
of lost stars and struggling universes;

He stands laughing behind each door.

His shadow sustains me.
And which of my gifts will you reject?
He asks.
I flail blindly with arms spread .
I see one. I see none.

Undoubtedly in My rememberance
will You find peace, my Love!
Says He.
I blabber with amnesia,
and my heart and body fail.

I once slept in a grave
by the side of an acquaintance
who had just passed on.
They lowered his body
and left him there.

My body left.
I remained.

The doors of Heaven
are in my rest.
The torments of hell
are on my body.
Worms devour me.
My soul sleeps on, forevermore.

Sleep, dear heart!
You have suffered long enough.
I loved you for venturing
into the House of the blues.
You vowed to take on
torments refused by angels
and hoories and devils and
demons.

I bestowed on you
a trust which the mountains
- proud and stern
and tall and mighty
they might seem to you - refused,
rumbling in terror,
sending up showers
and curtains of rock and stone
whirling in the air
like cotton wool.
So it was on
that Day of the Covenant
That You bowed your head
and said, "Indeed You are!"

So sleep now.
There’s an eternity for slumber.

At no time did
the door of existence close.
There never is nonexistence
draped in a shallow curtain
of not being.
I defy that.
I defy death to defy me.

I was a hidden treasure.
I created You to discover myself,
whispers my Love.
My Love is my love forever.
He erases me from myself.
He takes away my pain and piety.
He gives me kindness and time.
He loves me like I love my Love,
and what greater than that ever
in all aeons of all creation?

I saw a Ladder once.
It led up.
I followed the rungs like
an entranced child
stepping on ripples of moonlight
across a dark water
to go to the moon.

Each rung was a veil.
Each veil was a kindness.
Each kindess was a darkness.
And the ladder spiralled
round and round
in a whirpool
that centered at my heart.

Submission is the hardest thing
to do in the world.
Yet I lie.

I have no Beatrice,
no Ligiea, nor am I
Dante or Poe.
Yet I scream into the wind
lies that spin and collide
into the heart of darkness.

She is a shade, a shadow, a memory.
A state of being. A state of knowledge.
A sense of time.
A hope of more.
A loss of self.
A gain of sunlight
dappled across my ungainly chest.

We helped each other over avalanches,
over snowy cliffs and slipper slopes.
She placed her hand
on my shadow’s hand.
Touch defiles a goddess.

I dream.
Of parallel worlds
and time holes
and quantum foam
and burnt stars
and lost love,
forgotten friends,
deserted beaches,
broken promises,
burning betrayals,
ashy tears,
incomplete explanations,
tender touch
fierce passion
different I’s,
similar agony,
haunting faces
frosty winds.
I dream I dream I dream.

Hell lies.
‘Tis I who was created before all else.
My presence cools
the flames of Hell.
The sinners gather around me,
their fears vanquished,
their agony long gone.
'Tis I who’s in the mirror
in the mirror.
I live in the heart of atoms
and the precipice of the cliffs
none traversed.
My sound is the scraping
of weary pens on paper.
My eyes are the glimmer
of light on snow.
My ears are the trembling fingers
of the deaf,
my tongue the sorrowful stare
of the homeless.

I am born from the Pre-Eternal Chrysolite.
My name is Man. Man.

Ramble on

It's such a small world now that we wouldn't know mystery if it came up and bit us on the ass. All the things that we hold dear are moth smoke. We huff and puff and blow ourselves over. But the magic stays hidden and protected.

The world moves fast and quick like a dying man's last breath. In one wink, millions of doors to eternity open up, and in each door stands laughing he of the hundred faces. Each face is a grimace on a smile on a wince. What we feel we dare not put a name to for fear of unburying quite a few old smelly skeletons. And love is like a lost bird in the palm of a magician. Poof! it's gone.

It's such a small world now that we wouldn't know love if it came up and whispered soft sighs in our ears, full of wonderment and amazement. What is the idea of truth and purity becomes cliched and old in the hands of the multitude. A select few will know it, but by chance, not by will, for if one thing love and magic are, they are random chance, a flip of a coin, a whisk of a pheonix feather across ruddy cheeks.

It's such a small world now that we are all ordinary and standard. Nothing substantial exists anymore. Genius hides behing the facade of intellect. And intellect is ordinary. It sometimes is a measure of the size of one's head!

A Tribute to Whitman

I will fall like a cut dove
I will rise like a swan song

I am the secret
I am the mystery
I am the Lamp
I am the Niche
I am the veil
I am the hidden

I contemplate myself
before I celebrate myself
and in doing so
I live again

I will float like a free wind
I will sink like a pregnant cloud

I was nevermore
Then I was evermore
I was eternal;
and then I died
I do breathe again
like a tongue of fire
in the swirl of old smoke

I will see myself again
through the eyes of a hundred thousand eras

I am intellect
wisdom
foolhardiness
folly
I am not
though

I was, am and will be
I will not be beaten by death for
I live in the tiny crevices in atoms
and in the cavernous mouths of gods
I am God's memory
I am His search for Himself

I am not blasphemy
nor boldness nor arrogance
for I am

I am

Khuda Ke Liye: In the Name of God

At the age of 14, I stopped watching Pakistani movies altogether.

That won't be a surprise to anyone who has seen the movies produced by Lollywood, the not-even-close quasi-namesake of Hollywood in Pakistan. Afterll, it does get tiring after one has watched Anjuman and a bunch of other terriblly horribly trained 'actresses' run on the big screen, jiggling their gigantic behinds and fronts at the camera, depicting absolutely nothing about anything really going on in Pakistan at all. I remember there was a time when my mother used to get upset when I rented an English movie because it had 'kiss scenes' in it. The vulgarity in Pakistani movies humbled and embarrased me way more than those kiss scenes ever could.

So I stopped watching them altogether. And I hoped. I hoped that one day, I would become a good enough (or rich enough writer) to produce, write ad direct films that made even an iota of better sense.

Shoab Mansoor has beaten me to it.

The Sufism-immersed, music-loving, arts-celebrating writer/director has done the greatest service to Pakistani cinema by setting an immortal precedant...and with what glory and reality!

I will not go into the details of the movie. I need not. Someone once said about the Lord of the Rings that, "The English speaking world is divided into 2 kinds of people-those who have read the Lord of the Rings and those who will." I will say the same about this movie and the Pakistani society.

There are still some glitches in the movie as far as acting goes: Shan adopts his usual Punjabi Gunda style in his first few scenes, the first actor who walks into the shop of a Pakistani living in London to accuse him of not having raised a decent daughter is a bad actor, too self conscious and 'overdoing it', but there are superb bits of acting in the movie as well. Shan, for example, does a brilliant job later when he goes to Chicago and starts learning music, while dating a hot American girl. It's almost as if that the newness of his role as an English-speaking literate Pakistani actually extracts better acting from him.

I will not speak about the political current in the movie, its main theme, of the US agencies playing the role of angry, vindictive, scoffing, arrogant arses torturing a misunderstood, innocent Pakistani Muslim. I've seen enough of that scared, closet racism myself, which in some ways is not completely unjustified. We all fear the unknown. However, I will say this: the movie does a good job of putting across the views of majority of Lahoris, Pakistanis, Muslims. And now, I'll move on to the bit about music in Islam and in the movie.

Shoaib Mansoor cleverly uses the charismatic performance of Naseeruddin Shah to put his favourite, most important points across: "Keeping a beard is in religion; religion itself does not reside in the beard." This is awesome when put in the context of the fact that keeping a beard and attempting to mimic the prophet's way of dressing is the last rung on the ladder of religion, which in many ways for Muslims is Love of the prophet and hence of God Himself. One can be the best of Muslims, a king in a beggar's garb, without a beard as well.

Then Naseeruddin Shah voices one of the most important points regarding music in Islam: David, one of the four Prophets given a Book by God, had a beautiful voice and he loved singing the praise of God.

And here, let's talk a little about the permissibility of music in Islam, my opinions, my interpretation.

Music has always been controversial in Islam, and there are ahadith supporting the permissibility of music and there are those that prohibit it. One of the strongest supportive ahadith has been narrated by Aisha present in at least 3 of the Sahih books, which in my biased mind, proves beyong any question for me, that the Prophet did not prohibit music. I will quote 2 versions of that, both in the Shahih Bukhari, here:

Narrated Aisha:

That once Abu Bakr came to her on the day of 'Id-ul-Fitr or 'Id ul Adha while the Prophet was with her and there were two girl singers with her, singing songs of the Ansar about the day of Buath. Abu Bakr said twice. "Musical instrument of Satan!" But the Prophet said, "Leave them Abu Bakr, for every nation has an 'Id (i.e. festival) and this day is our 'Id."

Narrated Aisha
Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) came to my house while two girls were singing beside me the songs of Buath (a story about the war between the two tribes of the Ansar, the Khazraj and the Aus, before Islam). The Prophet (p.b.u.h) lay down and turned his face to the other side. Then Abu Bakr came and spoke to me harshly saying, "Musical instruments of Satan near the Prophet (p.b.u.h) ?" Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) turned his face towards him and said, "Leave them." When Abu Bakr became inattentive, I signalled to those girls to go out and they left. It was the day of 'Id, and the Black people were playing with shields and spears; so either I requested the Prophet (p.b.u.h) or he asked me whether I would like to see the display. I replied in the affirmative. Then the Prophet (p.b.u.h) made me stand behind him and my cheek was touching his cheek and he was saying, "Carry on! O Bani Arfida," till I got tired. The Prophet (p.b.u.h) asked me, "Are you satisfied (Is that sufficient for you)?" I replied in the affirmative and he told me to leave.

These are the versions of the same in Sahih Muslim:

Book 004, Number 1938:
'A'isha reported: Abu Bakr came to see me and I had two girls with me from among the girls of the Ansar and they were singing what the Ansar recited to one another at the Battle of Bu'ath. They were not, however, singing girls. Upon this Abu Bakr said: What I (the playing of) this wind instrument of Satan in the house of the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) and this too on 'Id day? Upon this the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Abu Bakr, every people have a festival and it is our festival (so let them play on).

Book 004, Number 1939:
This hadith has been narrated by Hisham with the same chain of transmitters, but there the words are:" Two girls were playing upon a tambourine."

Another hadith that supports the argument for music, that the Prophet was at least not averse to it (Bukhari):

Volume 5, Book 59, Number 336:
Narrated Ar-Rubai bint Muauwidh:
The Prophet came to me after consuming his marriage with me and sat down on my bed as you (the sub-narrator) are sitting now, and small girls were beating the tambourine and singing in lamentation of my father who had been killed on the day of the battle of Badr. Then one of the girls said, "There is a Prophet amongst us who knows what will happen tomorrow." The Prophet said (to her)," Do not say this, but go on saying what you have spoken before."


And here's a hadith that supports the argument against music, from Muslim:

Book 033, Number 6422:
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying. Allah fixed the very portion of adultery which a man will indulge in. There would be no escape from it. The adultery of the eye is the lustful look and the adultery of the ears is listening to voluptuous (song or talk) and the adultery of the tongue is licentious speech and the adultery of the hand is the lustful grip (embrace) and the adultery of the feet is to walk (to the place) where he intends to commit adultery and the heart yearns and desires which he may or may not put into effect

Note that song or talk is in brackets. Another version of the same Hadith omits the 'listening' portion completely , again in Muslim.

Here are two ahadith that seem somewhat similar and denounce music (Sunan Daud):

Book 41, Number 4906:
Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar:
Nafi' said: Ibn Umar heard a pipe, put his fingers in his ears and went away from the road. He said to me: Are you hearing anything? I said: No. He said: He then took his fingers out of his ears and said: I was with the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him), and he heard like this and he did like this. AbuAli al-Lu'lu said: I heard AbuDawud say: This is a rejected tradition.

Book 41, Number 4909:
Narrated Abdullah ibn Mas'ud:
Salam ibn Miskin, quoting an old man who witnessed AbuWa'il in a wedding feast, said: They began to play, amuse and sing. He united the support of his hand round his knees that were drawn up, and said: I heard Abdullah (ibn Mas'ud) say: I heard the apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say: Singing produces hypocrisy in the heart.

In the name of fairness, let me point out here that there are more ahadith, both in Bukhari and other Sahih books, that denounce music, but also some others that do not prohibit it.

This was my cursory search into a few of the books of ahadith that talk about music. Admittedly, there are millions of argument that can be made for and against music, based on these ahadith. Some scholars believe music is not allowed in Islam. Some say singing is allowed, but not instrument. Others still state that wind instruments are allowed, but not string. The rest denounce it utterly, based on whatever school of orthodoxy they belong to.

However, one thing that I can understand from all this is that if the Prophet let people sing, play the tambourine, and if one of Daud's miracles was singing in a beautiful voice, music can't be all that bad, can it? I scoff at the scholars who allow wind versus string instruments. That argument is just plain stupid, in my humble opinion. What difference does it make, from a logical POV, whether we play the flute or the guitar? The effect is pretty much the same. At the risk of offending many sensibilities, Ill offer this: Even the athan, the call to prayer, one of the greatest calls to worship is actually SUNG. It has a musical scale with certain notes. Allah chose to call his creatures to him using the sweetness of music in the human voice.

Anyway, these are all opinions, my opinions. I've been rehashing them for ages. To each his own My God is a merciful God that loves beauty, simplicity, order, music. I'm well aware He is the God of Wrath as well, but as Bestami says in Tazkerat-e-Auliyah, "...but for Love, Omnipotence would have wreaked destruction on all things." God is Love indeed.

Khuda ke liye, to sum up, is a living experience, very much relevant to our current politico-religious situation, and best of all, it is in actuality the revival of cinema in Pakistan.

Kudos to Shoaib Mansoor!


Reference: Saheeh Bukhari
Saheeh Muslim