"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps on this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools their ways to dusty death;
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and futy,
Signifying nothing..."
Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'
On this rather hot,lazy and thirsty Ramadan Sunday, reading Macbeth's sonnet above sent by 'a friend' somehow reminds me of Syed Qutb's tafseer of Surah Al Takathur, Chapter 102, of The Noble Qur'an. Don't ask me why. Perhaps Shakespeare's look at life via his story Macbeth underlined the West's view of life itself as a foreboding tragedy. A reminder to me of that famous and most influential early 19th century German humanist-philosopher, Schopenhauer.
Life, according to Schopenhauer, is determined by the WILL to carry on and on. The tapestry of one's life is the interplay of Wills of surrounding individuals. At the end of one's time, one's life is a tragedy: old age, unfulfilled dreams, and subsequently death.From the Western perspective, Life indeed is a tragedy:The promise and vagaries of youth, old age and ill health, and death....Fullstop. Western philosophical thoughts almost never address death and life beyond death.The station at the end of the line is death. What their thinkers cannot comprehend is not there!
Surah At Takathur,on the other hand, even as one of the shortest chapter of The Noble Quran, does not mince words on life after death, and addresses the issue head on. It opens up man to future probability of eternal happiness despite also a promise of damnation if the formullae and mix is not correct..Life,for it not to be an eternal tragedy, has to be 'walked through' with certain knowledge.....
Rivalry for Wordly Gain
at Takathur
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful!
"Rivalry for wordly gain distracts you, untill you visit your graves.
Indeed you shall know! Again, you shall certainly come to know.
Indeed, were you to have certain knowledge ... You shall certainly
see the fire of Hell. Yes, you will it with your eyes. Then, on
that day, you shall be questioned about your joys and comforts."
Sayyid Qutb had this to say regarding life:
This surah has a rhythm that is majestic and awe-inspiring - as if it were
the voice of a warner standing on a high place and projecting his voice
which rings out in weighty emphasis. He calls out to people who are
drowsy, drunken, confused. They approach a precipice with their eyes
closed and their feelings numbed. So the warner increases the volume of
his voice to the limit: "Rivalry for worldly gain distracts you until
you visit your graves."
You drunken and confused lot! You who take delight and indulge in rivalry
for wealth, children and the pleasures of this life - from which you are
sure to depart! You who are absorbed with what you have, unaware of what
comes afterwards! You who will leave the object of this rivalry, and what
you seek pride in and go to a narrow hole wherein there is no rivalry or
pride! Wake up and look around, all of you ! For indeed, "rivalry for
worldly gain distracts you until you visit your graves".
May your Ramadan and mine be a blessed one!
'Peppered' by moments of taqwa and remembrance.
Dr Nik Howk
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Biblical Stories in The Noble Qur'an...Surah Maryam , Chapter 19 ,
Maryam
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Kaf. Ha. Ya. A'in. Sad. (1) A mention of the mercy of thy Lord unto His servant Zachariah. (2) When he cried unto his Lord a cry in secret, (3) Saying: My Lord! Lo! the bones of me wax feeble and my head is shining with grey hair, and I have never been unblest in prayer to Thee, my Lord. (4) Lo! I fear my kinsfolk after me, since my wife is barren. Oh, give me from Thy presence a successor (5) Who shall inherit of me and inherit (also) of the house of Jacob. And make him, my Lord, acceptable (unto Thee). (6) (It was said unto him): O Zachariah! Lo! We bring thee tidings of a son whose name is John; we have given the same name to none before (him). (7) He said: My Lord! How can I have a son when my wife is barren and I have reached infirm old age? (8) He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me, even as I created thee before, when thou wast naught. (9) He said: My Lord! Appoint for me some token. He said: Thy token is that thou, with no bodily defect, shalt not speak unto mankind three nights. (10) Then he came forth unto his people from the sanctuary, and signified to them: Glorify your Lord at break of day and fall of night. (11) (And it was said unto his son): O John! Hold fast the Scripture. And we gave him wisdom when a child, (12) And compassion from Our presence, and purity; and he was devout, (13) And dutiful toward his parents. And he was not arrogant, rebellious. (14) Peace on him the day he was born, and the day he dieth and the day he shall be raised alive! (15) And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a chamber looking East, (16) And had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man. (17) She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou art God-fearing. (18) He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. (19) She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? (20) He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a Revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. (21) And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place. (22) And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become a thing of naught, forgotten! (23) Then (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee, (24) And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thou wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee. (25) So eat and drink and be consoled. And if thou meetest any mortal, say: Lo! I have vowed a fast unto the Beneficent, and may not speak this day to any mortal. (26) Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing. (27) O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot. (28) Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy? (29) He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet, (30) And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and hath enjoined upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I remain alive, (31) And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not made me arrogant, unblest. (32) Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive! (33) Such was Jesus, son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt. (34) It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is. (35) And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him. That is the right path. (36) The sects among them differ: but woe unto the disbelievers from the meeting of an awful Day. (37) How well they hear and see and hear them on the Day they come unto Us! yet the evil-doers are to-day in error manifest. (38) And warn them of the Day of anguish when the case hath been decided. Now they are in a state of carelessness, and they believe not. (39) Lo! We, inherit the earth and all who are thereon, and unto Us they are returned. (40) And make mention (O Muhammad) in the Scripture of Abraham. Lo! he was a saint, a prophet. (41) When he said unto his father: O my father! Why worshippest thou that which heareth not nor seeth, nor can in aught avail thee? (42) O my father! Lo! there hath come unto me of knowledge that which came not unto thee. So follow me, and I will lead thee on a right path. (43) O my father! Serve not the devil. Lo! the devil is a rebel unto the Beneficent. (44) O my father! Lo! I fear lest a punishment from the Beneficent overtake thee so that thou become a comrade of the devil. (45) He said: Rejectest thou my gods, O Abraham? If thou cease not, I shall surely stone thee. Depart from me a long while! (46) He said: Peace be unto thee! I shall ask forgiveness of my Lord for thee. Lo! He was ever gracious unto me. (47) I shall withdraw from you and that unto which ye pray beside Allah, and I shall pray unto my Lord. It may be that, in prayer unto my Lord, I shall not be unblest. (48) So, when he had withdrawn from them and that which they were worshipping beside Allah, We gave him Isaac and Jacob. Each of them We made a prophet. (49) And we gave them of Our mercy, and assigned to them a high and true renown. (50)
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Kaf. Ha. Ya. A'in. Sad. (1) A mention of the mercy of thy Lord unto His servant Zachariah. (2) When he cried unto his Lord a cry in secret, (3) Saying: My Lord! Lo! the bones of me wax feeble and my head is shining with grey hair, and I have never been unblest in prayer to Thee, my Lord. (4) Lo! I fear my kinsfolk after me, since my wife is barren. Oh, give me from Thy presence a successor (5) Who shall inherit of me and inherit (also) of the house of Jacob. And make him, my Lord, acceptable (unto Thee). (6) (It was said unto him): O Zachariah! Lo! We bring thee tidings of a son whose name is John; we have given the same name to none before (him). (7) He said: My Lord! How can I have a son when my wife is barren and I have reached infirm old age? (8) He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me, even as I created thee before, when thou wast naught. (9) He said: My Lord! Appoint for me some token. He said: Thy token is that thou, with no bodily defect, shalt not speak unto mankind three nights. (10) Then he came forth unto his people from the sanctuary, and signified to them: Glorify your Lord at break of day and fall of night. (11) (And it was said unto his son): O John! Hold fast the Scripture. And we gave him wisdom when a child, (12) And compassion from Our presence, and purity; and he was devout, (13) And dutiful toward his parents. And he was not arrogant, rebellious. (14) Peace on him the day he was born, and the day he dieth and the day he shall be raised alive! (15) And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a chamber looking East, (16) And had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man. (17) She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou art God-fearing. (18) He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. (19) She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? (20) He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a Revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. (21) And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place. (22) And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become a thing of naught, forgotten! (23) Then (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee, (24) And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thou wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee. (25) So eat and drink and be consoled. And if thou meetest any mortal, say: Lo! I have vowed a fast unto the Beneficent, and may not speak this day to any mortal. (26) Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing. (27) O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot. (28) Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy? (29) He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet, (30) And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and hath enjoined upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I remain alive, (31) And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not made me arrogant, unblest. (32) Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive! (33) Such was Jesus, son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt. (34) It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is. (35) And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him. That is the right path. (36) The sects among them differ: but woe unto the disbelievers from the meeting of an awful Day. (37) How well they hear and see and hear them on the Day they come unto Us! yet the evil-doers are to-day in error manifest. (38) And warn them of the Day of anguish when the case hath been decided. Now they are in a state of carelessness, and they believe not. (39) Lo! We, inherit the earth and all who are thereon, and unto Us they are returned. (40) And make mention (O Muhammad) in the Scripture of Abraham. Lo! he was a saint, a prophet. (41) When he said unto his father: O my father! Why worshippest thou that which heareth not nor seeth, nor can in aught avail thee? (42) O my father! Lo! there hath come unto me of knowledge that which came not unto thee. So follow me, and I will lead thee on a right path. (43) O my father! Serve not the devil. Lo! the devil is a rebel unto the Beneficent. (44) O my father! Lo! I fear lest a punishment from the Beneficent overtake thee so that thou become a comrade of the devil. (45) He said: Rejectest thou my gods, O Abraham? If thou cease not, I shall surely stone thee. Depart from me a long while! (46) He said: Peace be unto thee! I shall ask forgiveness of my Lord for thee. Lo! He was ever gracious unto me. (47) I shall withdraw from you and that unto which ye pray beside Allah, and I shall pray unto my Lord. It may be that, in prayer unto my Lord, I shall not be unblest. (48) So, when he had withdrawn from them and that which they were worshipping beside Allah, We gave him Isaac and Jacob. Each of them We made a prophet. (49) And we gave them of Our mercy, and assigned to them a high and true renown. (50)
Nuggets of Wisdom...
In the name of Allah-Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
And among His signs
Is this; thou seest
The earth barren and desolate;
But when We send down
Rain to it, it is stirred
To life and yields increase.
Truly, He who gives life
To the [dead] earth
Can surely give life
To [men] who are dead.
For He has power
Over all things.
al-Qur'an , 41: 39
And among His signs
Is this; thou seest
The earth barren and desolate;
But when We send down
Rain to it, it is stirred
To life and yields increase.
Truly, He who gives life
To the [dead] earth
Can surely give life
To [men] who are dead.
For He has power
Over all things.
al-Qur'an , 41: 39
Friday, August 20, 2010
On Death and Dying....Part VI
My paediatrics colleague email me this article on 'Letting Go' in terminally ill patients, mostly about cancer patients who have recurrence or in situation of treatment failure. We doctors do 'face' death all the time in whatever sub-specialities we are in. Probably some sub-specialities more than others for example oncology and geriatrics. In my own speciality, our problem is compounded further by the probability of my seemingly healthy looking patients walking into our clinic or being wheeled in for a procedure, dying a sudden cardiac death, in the immediate future or post procedurely or worst still for everyone, while 'on the table'.
Most of us are uncomfortable in discussing our very own mortality and in my over 30 years of practising medicine I find this fear to discuss death is usually two way, both the care givers as well as the patients. Younger generations of doctors, probably by training, lack of experience and more so due to their own feeling of inadequacy on the subject, generally have more difficulty in being blunt and 'letting go' of their patients, when in all probability all effort seem to be futile.Majority of them because of their inadequacy in broaching the rather difficult subject matter, significantly more so as well due to the inherrent fear of dampening the 'hopes' and aspiration of incurable,debilitating patients who may nonetheless may be hoping against hope for a 'miracle cure'.
In such situations when doctors do not and cannot find the wisdom to 'let go', unnecessary expense is incurred and in a moribund patient needing intensive care this can be substantial. Unnecessary ops may be recommended in a patient already riddled with cancerous metastases for example not because the surgeon is a charlatan but more often than not because he cannot think straight and also cannot comprehend his own frailty and mortality. A lot of spiritual and emotional energy wasted. On the other side of the same coin, it requires a lot of wisdom, experience and timing to be able to say, NO, we should not go on any more. This is the end of the road!
[ Medicine and surgery is easy when it is just science..The practice is difficult because after science, the art is a lifelong preoccupation for all of us.By right the conciouscios ones in the proffesion never stop learning from their patients ]
Many Malaysians particularly Muslim Malays especially [ due to ignorance,or specific blind spot, of Islam ] believe in oversimplistic 'magical cure'..Faith healing for example....That 'wali' who can change and transplant failing 'hearts' or cut away bludgeoning cancer out of someone's abdomen is perhaps just a phone call away...Somewhere in suburban Shah Alam, some years ago, in Selayang. Success was judged by the number of Jaguars and mercs lining the street leading to the socalled 'faith clinic'. Does not matter whether the socalled 'wali' is a cash crazy charlattan with no ethics, or morality...there is always a 'wali' somewhere that can do 'magic': a common fallacy even amongst even very highly educated, well-heeled Malays.
With the non-Muslim-non-Malays the problem we care givers usually encounter is different. The "Try every thing possible Doc! Expense is no problem " directive has to be tampered with justice and common sense by the doctors in charge. We have a brain dead young Chinese man who had cardiac arrest while scuba diving off Tioman some months ago in our hospital who was kept 'technically' alive in our CCU for more than a month because the primary doctor involved was afraid to put his feet down and tell bluntly that it is all futile to carry on. On the other side we have an unreasonable x numbers of family members who were in varying states of denial and competing with one another to show who cares most. A 'socio-pathological' family situation not uncommon.Personally my sentiment in such situation is that I blame the doctor in charge for 'poor leadership' and not taking real charge and not having the right 'gut' to call a spade a spade.
Death remain very much a taboo subject here. When faced with an elderly patient on 'death row', more often than not, younger close relatives and children would insist on the doctors to 'tip toe' ever so softly and not tell. We , care givers usually will be in a dicey situation: we will be damned if we do, and damn if we don't
I have a tendency to be upfront in discussing death and the possibility of death, and often times, to my dismay, discovered from nuances and body language, of their close relatives, that such discussions were not warranted. Relatives and children and oftentimes wives tend to under estimate the intelligence of their loved ones and their need to know 1st hand, however old and infirmed they are. I take the view that the dying patient, whatever the age, background and intelligence, must be given the personal space and time to deal with his or her imminent 'mortality'.When you have at the most months or week or just days of life on this planet, frank talk is more important than niceties in 'couched language'.
In my estimation, especially if they are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or belong to some form of religion,I respect their personal right and their need of that time and space, to atone or 'taubat' and come to term with their 'God'.Even agnostics need the time frame to organise and leave important wills and sort out their worldly belongings to their loved ones. Initial deep depression is inevitable but in the 'short run' it is much better this way than keeping patients guessing all the way through.
More often than not it is usually the patient who end up telling us doctors not to reveal their grave prognosis to their loved ones. ....and this in easier for us to handle....patient-doctor confidentiality
Thus I find this following article on 'letting go' in a way a vindication of my rather ' honestly blunt' approach which has been my philosophy for decades.
[ my own brother told me once, he was too frighten to see me, because I 'tell' and discuss too much....he is just interested in the 'good news'. I have since then toned down a wee bit.]
Dr Nik Howk
PS:" Life is just three bated breaths... the one that has just gone, the present one which is not entirely expired yet,...and the next one that is not yet certain"
An old Sufi reminder.
[ if our political bosses can internalise this, our FDI, our continuous bleeding in the nation's coffers and our present state of the nation would probably be in a more 'healthy' position that what it is now! ]
......................................................
From Medscape Medical News
Difficulties in "Letting Go" When Medicine Can Do Little More
Zosia Chustecka
There is a fine balancing act in these discussions between not killing hope and confronting other possibilities, including death. However, "talking about dying is enormously fraught," writes Atul Gawande, MD, a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, and has been a staff writer at the magazine since 1998.
Many doctors admit to finding end-of-life discussions difficult, and often delay them, as previously reported byMedscape Medical News. It is an issue that many oncologists have to grapple with on a regular basis in their clinical practice, and it is regularly discussed in scientific journals and meetings. But in writing on the topic at length in the New Yorker, a magazine known for arts and cultural essays and humorous cartoons, Dr. Gawande brings the issue to a public forum.
In the article, he asks: "What should medicine do when it can't save your life?"
He illustrates the piece with several case histories. One patient was a young woman diagnosed with advanced lung cancer late in her first pregnancy. Although terminally ill, she was always optimistic that another treatment would help, and Dr. Gawande describes how he was "swept along by her optimism" and was unable to confront her with her likely grim prognosis.
"Doctors are especially hesitant to trample on a patient's expectation. You worry far more about being overly pessimistic than you do about being overly optimistic," he writes.
At the back of his mind was the "long tail of possibility" that this patient might be the one who defies the odds.
There is nothing wrong with such hope, he says, unless "it means we have failed to prepare for the outcome that is vastly more probable." In the case of the patient he was describing, this hope unfortunately left her and her family unprepared to deal with her death.
"We've created a multimillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets — and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win," he writes.
Issue Is Pressing and Expensive
"The issue has become pressing, in recent years, for reasons of expense," he points out. The terminally ill account for a lot of the soaring cost of healthcare — 25% of all Medicare spending goes toward the 5% of patients in their final year of life, and "most of that money goes for care in the last couple of months, which is of little apparent benefit."
Spending on cancer tends to follow a pattern, he notes. There are high initial costs as the cancer is treated, and then, if all goes well, these costs taper off.
For a breast cancer survivor, the average medical spend in 2003 was $54,000, most of it on the initial diagnosis, surgery, and where necessary radiation and chemotherapy.
However, for a patient with a fatal version of the disease, the cost curve is U-shaped, rising again toward the end, he points out. For a breast cancer patient with incurable disease, the average medical spend in the last 6 months of life was $63,000 in 2003.
"Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death with $8000-per-month chemotherapy, $3000-a-day intensive care, and $5000-an-hour surgery. Bt ultimately death comes, and no-one is very good at knowing when to stop."
When to Stop?
This question of when to stop is a modern problem, Dr. Gawande points out.
"For all but our most recent history, dying was typically a brief process. . . . The interval between recognizing that you had a life-threatening ailment and death was often just a matter of days or weeks."
"These days, swift catastrophic illness is the exception; for most people, death comes only after long medical struggle with an incurable condition — advanced cancer, progressive organ failure. . . . In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn't. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty — the how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost."
In the article, Dr. Gawande praises hospice care, and gives several examples of patients who greatly benefited from such care, including a young man with advanced pancreatic cancer. But he admits that all this was a revelation to him; his new understanding was gained first-hand after having accompanied a hospice nurse on her rounds.
Previously, he had equated hospice with "giving up" and a morphine drip, and he is certain that this view is shared by many doctors and patients.
In a live phone-in question-and-answer session with readers, a hospice worker commented on how patients and their caregivers often say "we wish we'd known about you sooner," and asks: "Shouldn't this be a wake-up for physicians? For the benefit of their patients and their patient's families?"
The hospice worker also noted that there appears to be a reluctance among physicians to discuss hospice with their patients, but at the same time there is an enthusiasm for "palliative care." The 2 are actually very similar, she pointed out: "What can we do to make physicians understand that hospice is just an extension of palliative care?"
Another person phoning in highlighted cultural differences, and described several scenarios in the Netherlands in which patients' wishes to stop treatment and die were respected. Dr. Gawande acknowledged the point, and wondered if there is more of a problem in the United States than elsewhere. He mentioned statistics from Sweden, where there has been a shift from around 90% to 30% in cancer patients dying in hospital over the past 2 decades, although he noted that some American centers have seen similar shifts in end-of life care.
"Fear of death (and facing death) seems to be a uniquely 20th century American problem," suggested one reader in an online commentary. "Why shouldn't there be continuous end-of-life discussions, held more casually during life's progression and not under the gun (if you will) at the end of one's life."
That reader criticized doctors for not being straightforward in discussing death, and called for more honesty. This was also a theme that emerged from a panel discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network earlier this year, when experts urged "straight talk with compassion."
However, Dr. Gawande questioned whether these issues "are THAT culture-specific. I think it is common everywhere to come across people who hope against hope that they can be saved," and suggested that this is "just human nature."
"It seems to me that our job in medicine is to just deal with it. If we have to wait for people to stop yearning for the long tail — for the lottery ticket — in order to help them, we will be hurting a lot of people for a long time to come," Dr. Gawande said. "Instead, we need to become more effective in using the techniques that experts already have for walking people through these moments in their lives."
One way to improve is through training. "Experience alone does not produce improvement. You can communicate badly for 30 years," he pointed out.
"But deliberate practice with coaching makes for measurable improvements," he said. "And that's likely what we need in medicine. We train and retrain for surgical skills. We probably need to do so for these discussions with terminally ill patients, as well," he concluded.
Most of us are uncomfortable in discussing our very own mortality and in my over 30 years of practising medicine I find this fear to discuss death is usually two way, both the care givers as well as the patients. Younger generations of doctors, probably by training, lack of experience and more so due to their own feeling of inadequacy on the subject, generally have more difficulty in being blunt and 'letting go' of their patients, when in all probability all effort seem to be futile.Majority of them because of their inadequacy in broaching the rather difficult subject matter, significantly more so as well due to the inherrent fear of dampening the 'hopes' and aspiration of incurable,debilitating patients who may nonetheless may be hoping against hope for a 'miracle cure'.
In such situations when doctors do not and cannot find the wisdom to 'let go', unnecessary expense is incurred and in a moribund patient needing intensive care this can be substantial. Unnecessary ops may be recommended in a patient already riddled with cancerous metastases for example not because the surgeon is a charlatan but more often than not because he cannot think straight and also cannot comprehend his own frailty and mortality. A lot of spiritual and emotional energy wasted. On the other side of the same coin, it requires a lot of wisdom, experience and timing to be able to say, NO, we should not go on any more. This is the end of the road!
[ Medicine and surgery is easy when it is just science..The practice is difficult because after science, the art is a lifelong preoccupation for all of us.By right the conciouscios ones in the proffesion never stop learning from their patients ]
Many Malaysians particularly Muslim Malays especially [ due to ignorance,or specific blind spot, of Islam ] believe in oversimplistic 'magical cure'..Faith healing for example....That 'wali' who can change and transplant failing 'hearts' or cut away bludgeoning cancer out of someone's abdomen is perhaps just a phone call away...Somewhere in suburban Shah Alam, some years ago, in Selayang. Success was judged by the number of Jaguars and mercs lining the street leading to the socalled 'faith clinic'. Does not matter whether the socalled 'wali' is a cash crazy charlattan with no ethics, or morality...there is always a 'wali' somewhere that can do 'magic': a common fallacy even amongst even very highly educated, well-heeled Malays.
With the non-Muslim-non-Malays the problem we care givers usually encounter is different. The "Try every thing possible Doc! Expense is no problem " directive has to be tampered with justice and common sense by the doctors in charge. We have a brain dead young Chinese man who had cardiac arrest while scuba diving off Tioman some months ago in our hospital who was kept 'technically' alive in our CCU for more than a month because the primary doctor involved was afraid to put his feet down and tell bluntly that it is all futile to carry on. On the other side we have an unreasonable x numbers of family members who were in varying states of denial and competing with one another to show who cares most. A 'socio-pathological' family situation not uncommon.Personally my sentiment in such situation is that I blame the doctor in charge for 'poor leadership' and not taking real charge and not having the right 'gut' to call a spade a spade.
Death remain very much a taboo subject here. When faced with an elderly patient on 'death row', more often than not, younger close relatives and children would insist on the doctors to 'tip toe' ever so softly and not tell. We , care givers usually will be in a dicey situation: we will be damned if we do, and damn if we don't
I have a tendency to be upfront in discussing death and the possibility of death, and often times, to my dismay, discovered from nuances and body language, of their close relatives, that such discussions were not warranted. Relatives and children and oftentimes wives tend to under estimate the intelligence of their loved ones and their need to know 1st hand, however old and infirmed they are. I take the view that the dying patient, whatever the age, background and intelligence, must be given the personal space and time to deal with his or her imminent 'mortality'.When you have at the most months or week or just days of life on this planet, frank talk is more important than niceties in 'couched language'.
In my estimation, especially if they are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or belong to some form of religion,I respect their personal right and their need of that time and space, to atone or 'taubat' and come to term with their 'God'.Even agnostics need the time frame to organise and leave important wills and sort out their worldly belongings to their loved ones. Initial deep depression is inevitable but in the 'short run' it is much better this way than keeping patients guessing all the way through.
More often than not it is usually the patient who end up telling us doctors not to reveal their grave prognosis to their loved ones. ....and this in easier for us to handle....patient-doctor confidentiality
Thus I find this following article on 'letting go' in a way a vindication of my rather ' honestly blunt' approach which has been my philosophy for decades.
[ my own brother told me once, he was too frighten to see me, because I 'tell' and discuss too much....he is just interested in the 'good news'. I have since then toned down a wee bit.]
Dr Nik Howk
PS:" Life is just three bated breaths... the one that has just gone, the present one which is not entirely expired yet,...and the next one that is not yet certain"
An old Sufi reminder.
[ if our political bosses can internalise this, our FDI, our continuous bleeding in the nation's coffers and our present state of the nation would probably be in a more 'healthy' position that what it is now! ]
......................................................
From Medscape Medical News
Difficulties in "Letting Go" When Medicine Can Do Little More
Zosia Chustecka
There is a fine balancing act in these discussions between not killing hope and confronting other possibilities, including death. However, "talking about dying is enormously fraught," writes Atul Gawande, MD, a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, and has been a staff writer at the magazine since 1998.
Many doctors admit to finding end-of-life discussions difficult, and often delay them, as previously reported byMedscape Medical News. It is an issue that many oncologists have to grapple with on a regular basis in their clinical practice, and it is regularly discussed in scientific journals and meetings. But in writing on the topic at length in the New Yorker, a magazine known for arts and cultural essays and humorous cartoons, Dr. Gawande brings the issue to a public forum.
In the article, he asks: "What should medicine do when it can't save your life?"
He illustrates the piece with several case histories. One patient was a young woman diagnosed with advanced lung cancer late in her first pregnancy. Although terminally ill, she was always optimistic that another treatment would help, and Dr. Gawande describes how he was "swept along by her optimism" and was unable to confront her with her likely grim prognosis.
"Doctors are especially hesitant to trample on a patient's expectation. You worry far more about being overly pessimistic than you do about being overly optimistic," he writes.
At the back of his mind was the "long tail of possibility" that this patient might be the one who defies the odds.
There is nothing wrong with such hope, he says, unless "it means we have failed to prepare for the outcome that is vastly more probable." In the case of the patient he was describing, this hope unfortunately left her and her family unprepared to deal with her death.
"We've created a multimillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets — and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win," he writes.
Issue Is Pressing and Expensive
"The issue has become pressing, in recent years, for reasons of expense," he points out. The terminally ill account for a lot of the soaring cost of healthcare — 25% of all Medicare spending goes toward the 5% of patients in their final year of life, and "most of that money goes for care in the last couple of months, which is of little apparent benefit."
Spending on cancer tends to follow a pattern, he notes. There are high initial costs as the cancer is treated, and then, if all goes well, these costs taper off.
For a breast cancer survivor, the average medical spend in 2003 was $54,000, most of it on the initial diagnosis, surgery, and where necessary radiation and chemotherapy.
However, for a patient with a fatal version of the disease, the cost curve is U-shaped, rising again toward the end, he points out. For a breast cancer patient with incurable disease, the average medical spend in the last 6 months of life was $63,000 in 2003.
"Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death with $8000-per-month chemotherapy, $3000-a-day intensive care, and $5000-an-hour surgery. Bt ultimately death comes, and no-one is very good at knowing when to stop."
When to Stop?
This question of when to stop is a modern problem, Dr. Gawande points out.
"For all but our most recent history, dying was typically a brief process. . . . The interval between recognizing that you had a life-threatening ailment and death was often just a matter of days or weeks."
"These days, swift catastrophic illness is the exception; for most people, death comes only after long medical struggle with an incurable condition — advanced cancer, progressive organ failure. . . . In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn't. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty — the how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost."
In the article, Dr. Gawande praises hospice care, and gives several examples of patients who greatly benefited from such care, including a young man with advanced pancreatic cancer. But he admits that all this was a revelation to him; his new understanding was gained first-hand after having accompanied a hospice nurse on her rounds.
Previously, he had equated hospice with "giving up" and a morphine drip, and he is certain that this view is shared by many doctors and patients.
In a live phone-in question-and-answer session with readers, a hospice worker commented on how patients and their caregivers often say "we wish we'd known about you sooner," and asks: "Shouldn't this be a wake-up for physicians? For the benefit of their patients and their patient's families?"
The hospice worker also noted that there appears to be a reluctance among physicians to discuss hospice with their patients, but at the same time there is an enthusiasm for "palliative care." The 2 are actually very similar, she pointed out: "What can we do to make physicians understand that hospice is just an extension of palliative care?"
Another person phoning in highlighted cultural differences, and described several scenarios in the Netherlands in which patients' wishes to stop treatment and die were respected. Dr. Gawande acknowledged the point, and wondered if there is more of a problem in the United States than elsewhere. He mentioned statistics from Sweden, where there has been a shift from around 90% to 30% in cancer patients dying in hospital over the past 2 decades, although he noted that some American centers have seen similar shifts in end-of life care.
"Fear of death (and facing death) seems to be a uniquely 20th century American problem," suggested one reader in an online commentary. "Why shouldn't there be continuous end-of-life discussions, held more casually during life's progression and not under the gun (if you will) at the end of one's life."
That reader criticized doctors for not being straightforward in discussing death, and called for more honesty. This was also a theme that emerged from a panel discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network earlier this year, when experts urged "straight talk with compassion."
However, Dr. Gawande questioned whether these issues "are THAT culture-specific. I think it is common everywhere to come across people who hope against hope that they can be saved," and suggested that this is "just human nature."
"It seems to me that our job in medicine is to just deal with it. If we have to wait for people to stop yearning for the long tail — for the lottery ticket — in order to help them, we will be hurting a lot of people for a long time to come," Dr. Gawande said. "Instead, we need to become more effective in using the techniques that experts already have for walking people through these moments in their lives."
One way to improve is through training. "Experience alone does not produce improvement. You can communicate badly for 30 years," he pointed out.
"But deliberate practice with coaching makes for measurable improvements," he said. "And that's likely what we need in medicine. We train and retrain for surgical skills. We probably need to do so for these discussions with terminally ill patients, as well," he concluded.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Gai Eaton aka Hassan Abdul Hakeem....Nuggets of Wisdom
"Providence, however, has provided compensations to the decline of spirituality in our time; the destruction of barriers which formerly separated one 'traditional' world from another has made it possible for us to look further afield if we must; Those who do so run very real risks like tourists wandering innocently in an unfamiliar land. They may expect to meet 'gurus' who claim to offer easy access to the peaks of Hinduism quite outside the enduring body of Hindu tradition, neo-Buddhists who have little acquaintance with the orthodox schools of Buddhism, 'sufis' who have turned their backs on Islamic orthodoxy, and even 'geniuses' who have borrowed bits and pieces from every religion under the sun [adding a little magic for good measure] and offer some brand new religion to the brand new people of this age. One way or another these false prophets make their appeal to pride and ignorance, inflating the ego with a poisonous wind."
Gai Eaton in 'King of the Castle'
[ 1921-26th February,2010 ]
Gai Eaton in 'King of the Castle'
[ 1921-26th February,2010 ]
Monday, August 16, 2010
Conversations on Islam.....Modern Science and the Muslims
Dato'Hamzah Majid
To Nik Isahak Abdullah
Dear Dato,
I have been following your blog, and the thread of conversation with
Prof. Wan, on Islam and the virtual world created by digital science,
with interest. You are an interventionist cardiologist, clearly
someone trained in the empirical sciences. We Muslims can be proud of
our tradition in the sciences, pioneered by people like Ibn Sina
(Latin Avecenna). Indeed, Abn Sina can be considered the father of
modern Medicine, and in Philosophy by Abu Rashud (Lat. Averroes), et
al. Again, had it not been for Acerroes, we would have no idea of the
depth and breadth of the thoughts of Aristotle and the ancient Greeks.
We owe the Arab scholars an enduring debt of gratitude.
There were, of course enormous contributions from the classical Indian
thinkers (who gave us the concept of numbers, and zero!) and the
Persian and Chinese thinkers, too. Today, the Chinese and the Indians
are aggressively catching up in the sciences and technology and,
ipso facto, in economics, manufacturing and business. The basic, key
indicators? The expansion in the numbers and quality of their
universities
especially in Mathematics, the Sciences, Technology, and English. Last
month the Chinese government announced that it is executing a plan to
make 200 million Chinese nationals fluent in English by 2015, and make
Beijing the economic and cultural hub of the world by 2020. It is not
an idle aim: China has, as of last week, overtaken Japan as the second
largest economy in terms of GDP.
However, it is sad to note that Muslim countries, despite the OIC, are
lagging behind in the key areas mentioned above. They are also
laggards in terms public ethics, good governance, and transparency.
Sadly, there is ample evidence of it.
Let us start with the Sciences, as you have a scientific background.
Abu Sinha proudly embraced the Aristotelian approach to empirical
science - observation, verification, the validity of cause-and-effect
deduction, and classification. This is now the universal scientific
method. There is no "Christian", or "Jewish", or "Islamic", or
"Hindu", or "Buddhist", scientific methodology. There is only the
scientific methodology.
May I enquire, Dato, as a medical scientist, do you see a resurgence
of the sciences (as opposed to "Islamic" science) in Muslim countries?
Education is key to the increasingly competitive world today, and in
time to come. Everything begins with a thinking kind of education, not
learning by rote, as is happening in the hundreds of thousands of
madarassas in the Muslim world. It is sad, and worrying.
Salams and best wishes for the month of Ramadhan.
Hamzah.
................................
Dato' Hamzah,
Ist and foremost I am not a Dato'. Just a simple half empty tin can that somehow made too much noise.
We have lost the scientific endervour centuries back when Muslims started looking inwards as the the latter day Ottomans go into self destruct mode. Those glorious moments with Ibn Sina , Ibn Rusdi, Imam Ghazali's period et al, represent the golden era of Islam when Muslims understand the clarion call of the Book for Muslims to be Allah's viceroys on earth. That period was the precursor to the latter day European Renaissance. Nothing wrong with Islam because Islam means submission to the one God, and total irreverance to anything supertitious and non scientific or nonrational.
I beg to differ with you on the issue of Islamic Science and the narrow connotation it carries.When present day Muslims scholars like Prof Naguib Alatas and Hoessien Nasr et al talk about the Islamisation of knowledge, people got the wrong idea that we have to Islamise knowledge. That Islamized science or knowledge would denote inferior knowledge. It is very far from that...it has to do with the precept and assumption amongst the West that science should start from 'Ground Zero' and meaning no Maker out there, and looking outward into the Universe, perhaps look into space, look into cells and mitochondrions, into molecules and atom without the assumption there is a Maker with profound knowledge building things and templates with uniform intelligent design...trying to make some sense out of it, and in the process even when they see God's hand in it , as what happened to Einstein when he was playing around with his new theory of relativity, disregard it and put some unkonwn 'constant' to avoid God!
What these noted Muslim scholars are just saying is that if one start with the premise that God is there, then our whole approach to science and discovery will be significantly more different, more humanistic and purposive towards the enhancement of human life on earth rather than often times being self destructive. One wonder if the founders of atomic fission during the second world war period, if they start with the premise that the is a Maker out there, that they would collectively would have focusssed themselves on the 1st atomic bomb. Needless to say the whole philosophy underlying latter day Space exploration was actually the West preoccupation to maintain hegemony over Russia. Ronald Reagan's outer space defence project did not take off because it was going to cost trillions and trillions of USD not because of any altruism on their part. Also because Gorbachev was gullible enough to embrace Reagonomics which lead to the ultimate downfall of USSR and thus the Cold War.
At present I have a running battle with my ulama friends asking them to come out of the closet and go 'virtual' in stead of keeping to the 'Ivory Tower'. It is articles like yours that speak volumes for the need of current day Ulama.' to be more aggressive and explain things to the 'illiterate' masses. I am just an empty tin can who is acting as a 'bidan terjun'.
Clowns like Syed Akbar Ali for instance need to be 'rebutted' but who to do that ??!!
I am digressing here and have not really answered your question...
Dr Nik Howk
..................................
Hamzah Majid
To Nik Isahak Abdullah
Dear Dr. Nik,
Thank you for your response. You are being modest; you are not an empty tin can. Far from it! I respect your views as that of a highly
educated man.
I would, however, hold a different view from that expressed in your response. First of all, Einstein had been haunted by the remark he
made that 'God does not play dice'. Actually he said that out of a sense of discomfort with the 'uncertainty implications' of the, then, 'new' Quantum Mechanics (QM) as propounded by Neils Bohr, et al. This was entirely understandable, as QM was, an still is, very counter intuitive - how can a particle be in two places at one time? Of course, we now know that Bohr was right after all, and we cannot determine at the same time both the speed and the location of a particle. QM has been proved right, time and again, by today's science and technology. Indeed, the very equipment that you use in your practice as a cardiologist are based on the validity of QM. That, in brief, was one of the errors of the great man, and he deeply regretted it later.
The other error he made was was the one referred to in your response. He found, in his calculations on the Theory of Relativity, that it led him
to the conclusion that the universe was expanding! This could not be! He could not accept this. He felt there was an element of instability that needs to be balanced, and so he introduced the constant c to his calculations to lead to a stable universe. Of course, we now know that he was on the right track in the first place - the universe is indeed expanding, all the time, and at the speed of light. When his Math led Einstein to wonder in some confusion, present telescopes confirm the 'red-shift' in all observable stars... that the universe is indeed expanding in all directions, and have done so since the Bag Bang 13.6 billion years ago.
The beauty of modern science is that it is not doctrinaire. It does not demand loyalty; it can be proved false, and rejected. It has a self-correcting mechanism that keeps it fresh and true. Based partly on Aristotelian logic, calculus, and the Algebraic calculations of Arab scholars, it has almost freed Mankind from poverty, starvation, and the cruelties of religious wars, persecution, and superstition. It has given us modern Medicine (and all the sophisticated equipment and methodology that you, yourself, use in your profession), computers, air travel, space station, and all the security, comfort and leisure that we enjoy today. This only came about very recently, when science gave birth to technology, after the 1800's.
This still leaves us with my initial enquiry - when will we Muslims embrace modern science, and get out of the trap of ignorance, poverty, superstition, cruelty, and corruption? Among the 20 top countries in the world noted for science, technology, clean governance, democracy, and prosperity, not one is a Muslim country. This is sad part. Worth pondering, don't you think?
Salams and best wishes.
Hamzah.
...............................
Dato',
When will we ever embrace science ? An interesting question. TQ for your very profound answer anyway. I did not know you are a profound science man. Not Many Malaysian can explain Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle and Einstein duality of matter the way you do. I think we can count them on fingers and toes!.
The gap in basic sciences between the West and Muslim countries are widening, almost unbrigeable. Firstly we on the whole, having left science to the 'kuffars' for so long have no significant base in basic research and basic sciences.
Secondly, we present day Muslims are great at 'aping' the West but at the wrong angles, totally missing the substance. I just give you you one local example. Just when 15 years ago the West was already wholesale into molecular genetics ,engineering at the molecular level, Dr M discovered IT. He was so obsessed with how to communicate in microseconds between Cyberjaya and Petronas Twin Tower. Does not matter that the e- file having reach the 56 th Floor will take 2 weeks to be seen and presented to the 57th floor. Would take another probably 2 years to see the light of the day!When it sees the light of the day, given to the wrong crony...take that Iraqi chap, the InventQ fame, as an example the one that squandered hundreds of millions of public funding. And now we have finally realised that the whole world is hooked on nano technology and genetic engineering.... have an average IQ medical lady with very little knowledge to head the venture, not top scientists with vision. Another potential failure in the making. Choice of leadership , reflect personal interest of boss or sub-boss rather than intuitive choice of substance! Our Numero Uno want quick fixes solution, like drunkards crazy for alcohol....The problem are in general political rather than Islam
At the universities level the game is similar. The game of the average played by mediocre VC's, the Yes-man to mediocre ministers . Universities are now doing the number game, involve in sub standard comercialisation and out dated projects just to please the Higher education or science minister. The minister just want the numbers to impress his equally ignorant boss . Probably in the rest of the other Muslim countries the problem is about the same if not more....Forms more important than substance...I would put it more bluntly: The lack of fear of God, probably arising from the lack of confidence in having to answer in the Hereafter. One can be Muslims but many still not very confident they have to answer for what they do, the mediocre decisions they made affecting millions.{ I have been a prime mover in the equestrian sport at the national and international level. Even in sport, we are behaving the same..quick fixes, forms more important rather than substances. A typical Malaysian disease}. This mental malaise is from top to bottom.We have become champions at quick fixes , not looking at the fundamentals and improving on it.
Thirdly, we lack focus.Our basic scientists in the U are not going anywhere. There are not enough funding for research.For example, Geneticists and gene scientist with PHD's are much sought after in the West. They got grabbed , the excellent ones. Over here they gravitate into frustating teaching jobs with low pay.
The problem is ,we are a nation of manufacturers. That does not make us a scientific nation. We want quick fix, not hard work. We want the numbers to please the boss! I do not know...Singapore got hooked on molecular biology very early and they have garnered the best brains in the world. Now they are leading in Asia in this aspect. There is a lot of catch up for us to do and this has nothing to do with religion. Poor and unenlightened governance at the very top with no vision and at the middle clowns ever ready to please. The VC's, kang kong proffessors etc etc holding down young energetic talents , frustrating them and pushing them out of basic research also contribute to these malaise.
It would be difficult for us to play catch up in some areas but there are areas where Muslims countries, mainly in the tropics and subtropics should excel. We should concentrate on ways and mean to harness the solar energy in all aspect of our human activities. Research and resources should be expanded that way. We cannot expect the Danes or Germans to come up with cars and households depending on 100 % solar....The balance of power would shift to the Muslims in the equators and subtropic. No way are they going to go big on solar research to make it cheap.....That would be political and economic suicide for the West.
Another area would be Nuclear. If all IOC countries wants to go nuclear and nuclear research, UN would go berserk but why not?....Nuclear for humanity is the way to go. Clean energy. In 20 years time cars will go 100 % electric, obtained partially from solar and electricity derived and distributed from nuclear plants all over Muslim countries. IOC should look into into and somewhat relieve Iran of the present stress it has to contend with Let us all go nuclear.
I cannot see us catching up let alone beating the West in molecular biology. They are far ahead. Nuclear and solar , with some help, are a more even playing fields. We should be there if there is political will and if in the next decade or so we have sane leaders who can think with their heads not with their stomachs!
Dangerous thought Nik Isahak, that is why I have difficulty entering Australia and now even Hong Kong. I have been waiting for an American visa for the last 5 years! They have not called me. They promised to...
I have still not fully answered your question Dato, I think....
Dr Nik Howk
pS: OK I can partially answer your last question. When we truly understand our Book given to us, Its meaning and the spirit for which it was revealed. It is meant for an Ummah that can be the viceroys of Allah to bring economic ,social and emotional well beings and a perpetual state of HAPPINESS in the here and the hereafter,not only to Muslims on the planet but to all humanity regardless of colour, leanings and philosophical bents.
Either very few understand the true meaning of the Book for the moment or the Muslim world currently have been hijacked by highway robbers, scoundrels and clowns!
..............................
Dear Dr. Nik,
Thank you for your email that I saw late last night. First of all, I wish to say that you are most kind and generous with your remarks, and
I am certainly undeserving of them. I am no 'man of science', let alone one of 'par excellence' - but I admit to being someone who is very curious about nearly everything. I regard science not as a qualification, but rather as a rational approach to understanding one's physical and philosophical environment. Hence, I am intrigued by Newton's accomplishment in calculating the movement of the heavenly bodies, and yet fail to understand the nature of gravity. It was centuries later that Einstein challenged our imagination when he explained gravity as the consequence of the warping effect of mass upon time/space. Fascinating, how the human mind can gradually grasp the realities of the universe.
I found the same excitement when I first read Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' (a book my sons got me as a birthday present some years ago). Not only is it a superlative piece of leisurely Victorian literature, but the insights it offered were stunning! That got me reading all the books by Richard Dawkins, the modern Darwinist. Again, I found Stephen Hawking's books both illuminating and satisfying, as was the 'First Three Seconds' by Steven Weinberg (about the Big Bang) and Michio Kaku on 'The Physics of Impossibility'. One can go on, and on. It is the delight
one experiences in getting an answer to a nagging question, like scratching an itch in the mind. It reminds me of a chance remark my college tutor once made (when I was an undergraduate over half a century ago!): "Education is what one gets between lectures".
When you mentioned that religion has been "hijacked by robbers, scoundrels and clown" - I think you are absolutely correct. Organized religion, since the time of the Pharaohs, Incas, right down to the classical period of the Greek city states, through the Medieval Age, right up to today, has always been the handmaiden of the ruling elite. The cleric and the feudal lords, the industrialists and the Vatican, the Church and the Establishment, the military junta in Somalia and the Islamic cleric, the Ayatollahs and the Teheran regime, they have all, almost without exception joined hands to maintain the status quo. Belief and status quo tend to cosy up to each other.
On the other hand, it is rational science that forges ahead to give us a better understanding of the universe and the human condition, and it is organized religion tends to hold us back. It has been religion that tortured scholars who had inconvenient ideas that the earth spins around the sun, and burned people at the stake. Carl Sagan in his fascinating 'Science as a Candle in the Dark', puts such historical events in sobering perspective. Today, a stunning example is provided in the US by the alliance between the Southern Baptist Church and the Seventh Day Adventists (the Evangelical Christians, 60 million of them) and the Republican Party. They were the catalyst behind the Bush invasion of Iraq. They honestly believe that the world will come to an end at Armageddon, and Jesus will appear through the cloud as a Second Coming, all true Christian believers will be saved, and non Christians will perish in one final firestorm of a battle. What is scary is that many well educated Americans actually believe in this nonsense. This political bloc is the biggest stumbling block in the way of a Middle East accord that Obama is trying to achieve.
Salams and best wishes.
Hamzah.
.............................
Dato,
The irony of it all is that all these luminaries that you mentioned, Charles Darwin,, Richard Dawkins, Stephan Hawkins, Carl Sagan and lastly Michio Kaku, were all, sadly, hard core materialists/atheists.
Without taking the accolade one bit from them as they are excellent individuals in their very specialised fields, the Muslims were actually given some inkling into the formation of the universe some 1450 years ago in the Qur'an:
"Have not those who disbelieve know that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and We made every living thing of water? Will they not then know? " [ Surah Al Anbiya , 21 : 30 ]
It is a tragedy for us Muslims that following the degeneration that began within the Ottomans, Muslims have lost the impetus of science only in the last century. Carl Sagan et al, had regain the upper hand only just now but history, whether we like it or not, is only written by the victors..
Nonetheless we Muslims should not feel dispondent. At the personal level,It is a double tragedy for brilliant chaps like Carl Sagans et al that despite the special knowledge and IQ endowed to them, they were all lost in the labyrinth, the small 'lorongs' and the byways. They missed the unifying 'mountain of evidence' staring at them. Real Happiness at the personal level, Dato, has to do with not just having superior knowledge, a six figure income and a Jaguar in the garage!. Knowledge and all that, must be tampered with 'true wisdom' since without doubt,as Muslims, we do believe Happiness ,from the Islamic viewpoint any way, has to encompass both the Here and the Hereafter.
"Lo! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the difference of night and day are tokens of His Sovereignty for men of understanding, Such as remember Allah, standing, sitting, and reclining, and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth, and say: Our Lord! Thou createdst not this in vain. Glory be to Thee! Preserve us from the doom of Fire. "
Al Imran, 3 : 190-191
Islam is about excellence. Excellence in the here and the hereafter. This century is ours, insyaallah!
Dr Nik Howk
To Nik Isahak Abdullah
Dear Dato,
I have been following your blog, and the thread of conversation with
Prof. Wan, on Islam and the virtual world created by digital science,
with interest. You are an interventionist cardiologist, clearly
someone trained in the empirical sciences. We Muslims can be proud of
our tradition in the sciences, pioneered by people like Ibn Sina
(Latin Avecenna). Indeed, Abn Sina can be considered the father of
modern Medicine, and in Philosophy by Abu Rashud (Lat. Averroes), et
al. Again, had it not been for Acerroes, we would have no idea of the
depth and breadth of the thoughts of Aristotle and the ancient Greeks.
We owe the Arab scholars an enduring debt of gratitude.
There were, of course enormous contributions from the classical Indian
thinkers (who gave us the concept of numbers, and zero!) and the
Persian and Chinese thinkers, too. Today, the Chinese and the Indians
are aggressively catching up in the sciences and technology and,
ipso facto, in economics, manufacturing and business. The basic, key
indicators? The expansion in the numbers and quality of their
universities
especially in Mathematics, the Sciences, Technology, and English. Last
month the Chinese government announced that it is executing a plan to
make 200 million Chinese nationals fluent in English by 2015, and make
Beijing the economic and cultural hub of the world by 2020. It is not
an idle aim: China has, as of last week, overtaken Japan as the second
largest economy in terms of GDP.
However, it is sad to note that Muslim countries, despite the OIC, are
lagging behind in the key areas mentioned above. They are also
laggards in terms public ethics, good governance, and transparency.
Sadly, there is ample evidence of it.
Let us start with the Sciences, as you have a scientific background.
Abu Sinha proudly embraced the Aristotelian approach to empirical
science - observation, verification, the validity of cause-and-effect
deduction, and classification. This is now the universal scientific
method. There is no "Christian", or "Jewish", or "Islamic", or
"Hindu", or "Buddhist", scientific methodology. There is only the
scientific methodology.
May I enquire, Dato, as a medical scientist, do you see a resurgence
of the sciences (as opposed to "Islamic" science) in Muslim countries?
Education is key to the increasingly competitive world today, and in
time to come. Everything begins with a thinking kind of education, not
learning by rote, as is happening in the hundreds of thousands of
madarassas in the Muslim world. It is sad, and worrying.
Salams and best wishes for the month of Ramadhan.
Hamzah.
................................
Dato' Hamzah,
Ist and foremost I am not a Dato'. Just a simple half empty tin can that somehow made too much noise.
We have lost the scientific endervour centuries back when Muslims started looking inwards as the the latter day Ottomans go into self destruct mode. Those glorious moments with Ibn Sina , Ibn Rusdi, Imam Ghazali's period et al, represent the golden era of Islam when Muslims understand the clarion call of the Book for Muslims to be Allah's viceroys on earth. That period was the precursor to the latter day European Renaissance. Nothing wrong with Islam because Islam means submission to the one God, and total irreverance to anything supertitious and non scientific or nonrational.
I beg to differ with you on the issue of Islamic Science and the narrow connotation it carries.When present day Muslims scholars like Prof Naguib Alatas and Hoessien Nasr et al talk about the Islamisation of knowledge, people got the wrong idea that we have to Islamise knowledge. That Islamized science or knowledge would denote inferior knowledge. It is very far from that...it has to do with the precept and assumption amongst the West that science should start from 'Ground Zero' and meaning no Maker out there, and looking outward into the Universe, perhaps look into space, look into cells and mitochondrions, into molecules and atom without the assumption there is a Maker with profound knowledge building things and templates with uniform intelligent design...trying to make some sense out of it, and in the process even when they see God's hand in it , as what happened to Einstein when he was playing around with his new theory of relativity, disregard it and put some unkonwn 'constant' to avoid God!
What these noted Muslim scholars are just saying is that if one start with the premise that God is there, then our whole approach to science and discovery will be significantly more different, more humanistic and purposive towards the enhancement of human life on earth rather than often times being self destructive. One wonder if the founders of atomic fission during the second world war period, if they start with the premise that the is a Maker out there, that they would collectively would have focusssed themselves on the 1st atomic bomb. Needless to say the whole philosophy underlying latter day Space exploration was actually the West preoccupation to maintain hegemony over Russia. Ronald Reagan's outer space defence project did not take off because it was going to cost trillions and trillions of USD not because of any altruism on their part. Also because Gorbachev was gullible enough to embrace Reagonomics which lead to the ultimate downfall of USSR and thus the Cold War.
At present I have a running battle with my ulama friends asking them to come out of the closet and go 'virtual' in stead of keeping to the 'Ivory Tower'. It is articles like yours that speak volumes for the need of current day Ulama.' to be more aggressive and explain things to the 'illiterate' masses. I am just an empty tin can who is acting as a 'bidan terjun'.
Clowns like Syed Akbar Ali for instance need to be 'rebutted' but who to do that ??!!
I am digressing here and have not really answered your question...
Dr Nik Howk
..................................
Hamzah Majid
To Nik Isahak Abdullah
Dear Dr. Nik,
Thank you for your response. You are being modest; you are not an empty tin can. Far from it! I respect your views as that of a highly
educated man.
I would, however, hold a different view from that expressed in your response. First of all, Einstein had been haunted by the remark he
made that 'God does not play dice'. Actually he said that out of a sense of discomfort with the 'uncertainty implications' of the, then, 'new' Quantum Mechanics (QM) as propounded by Neils Bohr, et al. This was entirely understandable, as QM was, an still is, very counter intuitive - how can a particle be in two places at one time? Of course, we now know that Bohr was right after all, and we cannot determine at the same time both the speed and the location of a particle. QM has been proved right, time and again, by today's science and technology. Indeed, the very equipment that you use in your practice as a cardiologist are based on the validity of QM. That, in brief, was one of the errors of the great man, and he deeply regretted it later.
The other error he made was was the one referred to in your response. He found, in his calculations on the Theory of Relativity, that it led him
to the conclusion that the universe was expanding! This could not be! He could not accept this. He felt there was an element of instability that needs to be balanced, and so he introduced the constant c to his calculations to lead to a stable universe. Of course, we now know that he was on the right track in the first place - the universe is indeed expanding, all the time, and at the speed of light. When his Math led Einstein to wonder in some confusion, present telescopes confirm the 'red-shift' in all observable stars... that the universe is indeed expanding in all directions, and have done so since the Bag Bang 13.6 billion years ago.
The beauty of modern science is that it is not doctrinaire. It does not demand loyalty; it can be proved false, and rejected. It has a self-correcting mechanism that keeps it fresh and true. Based partly on Aristotelian logic, calculus, and the Algebraic calculations of Arab scholars, it has almost freed Mankind from poverty, starvation, and the cruelties of religious wars, persecution, and superstition. It has given us modern Medicine (and all the sophisticated equipment and methodology that you, yourself, use in your profession), computers, air travel, space station, and all the security, comfort and leisure that we enjoy today. This only came about very recently, when science gave birth to technology, after the 1800's.
This still leaves us with my initial enquiry - when will we Muslims embrace modern science, and get out of the trap of ignorance, poverty, superstition, cruelty, and corruption? Among the 20 top countries in the world noted for science, technology, clean governance, democracy, and prosperity, not one is a Muslim country. This is sad part. Worth pondering, don't you think?
Salams and best wishes.
Hamzah.
...............................
Dato',
When will we ever embrace science ? An interesting question. TQ for your very profound answer anyway. I did not know you are a profound science man. Not Many Malaysian can explain Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle and Einstein duality of matter the way you do. I think we can count them on fingers and toes!.
The gap in basic sciences between the West and Muslim countries are widening, almost unbrigeable. Firstly we on the whole, having left science to the 'kuffars' for so long have no significant base in basic research and basic sciences.
Secondly, we present day Muslims are great at 'aping' the West but at the wrong angles, totally missing the substance. I just give you you one local example. Just when 15 years ago the West was already wholesale into molecular genetics ,engineering at the molecular level, Dr M discovered IT. He was so obsessed with how to communicate in microseconds between Cyberjaya and Petronas Twin Tower. Does not matter that the e- file having reach the 56 th Floor will take 2 weeks to be seen and presented to the 57th floor. Would take another probably 2 years to see the light of the day!When it sees the light of the day, given to the wrong crony...take that Iraqi chap, the InventQ fame, as an example the one that squandered hundreds of millions of public funding. And now we have finally realised that the whole world is hooked on nano technology and genetic engineering.... have an average IQ medical lady with very little knowledge to head the venture, not top scientists with vision. Another potential failure in the making. Choice of leadership , reflect personal interest of boss or sub-boss rather than intuitive choice of substance! Our Numero Uno want quick fixes solution, like drunkards crazy for alcohol....The problem are in general political rather than Islam
At the universities level the game is similar. The game of the average played by mediocre VC's, the Yes-man to mediocre ministers . Universities are now doing the number game, involve in sub standard comercialisation and out dated projects just to please the Higher education or science minister. The minister just want the numbers to impress his equally ignorant boss . Probably in the rest of the other Muslim countries the problem is about the same if not more....Forms more important than substance...I would put it more bluntly: The lack of fear of God, probably arising from the lack of confidence in having to answer in the Hereafter. One can be Muslims but many still not very confident they have to answer for what they do, the mediocre decisions they made affecting millions.{ I have been a prime mover in the equestrian sport at the national and international level. Even in sport, we are behaving the same..quick fixes, forms more important rather than substances. A typical Malaysian disease}. This mental malaise is from top to bottom.We have become champions at quick fixes , not looking at the fundamentals and improving on it.
Thirdly, we lack focus.Our basic scientists in the U are not going anywhere. There are not enough funding for research.For example, Geneticists and gene scientist with PHD's are much sought after in the West. They got grabbed , the excellent ones. Over here they gravitate into frustating teaching jobs with low pay.
The problem is ,we are a nation of manufacturers. That does not make us a scientific nation. We want quick fix, not hard work. We want the numbers to please the boss! I do not know...Singapore got hooked on molecular biology very early and they have garnered the best brains in the world. Now they are leading in Asia in this aspect. There is a lot of catch up for us to do and this has nothing to do with religion. Poor and unenlightened governance at the very top with no vision and at the middle clowns ever ready to please. The VC's, kang kong proffessors etc etc holding down young energetic talents , frustrating them and pushing them out of basic research also contribute to these malaise.
It would be difficult for us to play catch up in some areas but there are areas where Muslims countries, mainly in the tropics and subtropics should excel. We should concentrate on ways and mean to harness the solar energy in all aspect of our human activities. Research and resources should be expanded that way. We cannot expect the Danes or Germans to come up with cars and households depending on 100 % solar....The balance of power would shift to the Muslims in the equators and subtropic. No way are they going to go big on solar research to make it cheap.....That would be political and economic suicide for the West.
Another area would be Nuclear. If all IOC countries wants to go nuclear and nuclear research, UN would go berserk but why not?....Nuclear for humanity is the way to go. Clean energy. In 20 years time cars will go 100 % electric, obtained partially from solar and electricity derived and distributed from nuclear plants all over Muslim countries. IOC should look into into and somewhat relieve Iran of the present stress it has to contend with Let us all go nuclear.
I cannot see us catching up let alone beating the West in molecular biology. They are far ahead. Nuclear and solar , with some help, are a more even playing fields. We should be there if there is political will and if in the next decade or so we have sane leaders who can think with their heads not with their stomachs!
Dangerous thought Nik Isahak, that is why I have difficulty entering Australia and now even Hong Kong. I have been waiting for an American visa for the last 5 years! They have not called me. They promised to...
I have still not fully answered your question Dato, I think....
Dr Nik Howk
pS: OK I can partially answer your last question. When we truly understand our Book given to us, Its meaning and the spirit for which it was revealed. It is meant for an Ummah that can be the viceroys of Allah to bring economic ,social and emotional well beings and a perpetual state of HAPPINESS in the here and the hereafter,not only to Muslims on the planet but to all humanity regardless of colour, leanings and philosophical bents.
Either very few understand the true meaning of the Book for the moment or the Muslim world currently have been hijacked by highway robbers, scoundrels and clowns!
..............................
Dear Dr. Nik,
Thank you for your email that I saw late last night. First of all, I wish to say that you are most kind and generous with your remarks, and
I am certainly undeserving of them. I am no 'man of science', let alone one of 'par excellence' - but I admit to being someone who is very curious about nearly everything. I regard science not as a qualification, but rather as a rational approach to understanding one's physical and philosophical environment. Hence, I am intrigued by Newton's accomplishment in calculating the movement of the heavenly bodies, and yet fail to understand the nature of gravity. It was centuries later that Einstein challenged our imagination when he explained gravity as the consequence of the warping effect of mass upon time/space. Fascinating, how the human mind can gradually grasp the realities of the universe.
I found the same excitement when I first read Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' (a book my sons got me as a birthday present some years ago). Not only is it a superlative piece of leisurely Victorian literature, but the insights it offered were stunning! That got me reading all the books by Richard Dawkins, the modern Darwinist. Again, I found Stephen Hawking's books both illuminating and satisfying, as was the 'First Three Seconds' by Steven Weinberg (about the Big Bang) and Michio Kaku on 'The Physics of Impossibility'. One can go on, and on. It is the delight
one experiences in getting an answer to a nagging question, like scratching an itch in the mind. It reminds me of a chance remark my college tutor once made (when I was an undergraduate over half a century ago!): "Education is what one gets between lectures".
When you mentioned that religion has been "hijacked by robbers, scoundrels and clown" - I think you are absolutely correct. Organized religion, since the time of the Pharaohs, Incas, right down to the classical period of the Greek city states, through the Medieval Age, right up to today, has always been the handmaiden of the ruling elite. The cleric and the feudal lords, the industrialists and the Vatican, the Church and the Establishment, the military junta in Somalia and the Islamic cleric, the Ayatollahs and the Teheran regime, they have all, almost without exception joined hands to maintain the status quo. Belief and status quo tend to cosy up to each other.
On the other hand, it is rational science that forges ahead to give us a better understanding of the universe and the human condition, and it is organized religion tends to hold us back. It has been religion that tortured scholars who had inconvenient ideas that the earth spins around the sun, and burned people at the stake. Carl Sagan in his fascinating 'Science as a Candle in the Dark', puts such historical events in sobering perspective. Today, a stunning example is provided in the US by the alliance between the Southern Baptist Church and the Seventh Day Adventists (the Evangelical Christians, 60 million of them) and the Republican Party. They were the catalyst behind the Bush invasion of Iraq. They honestly believe that the world will come to an end at Armageddon, and Jesus will appear through the cloud as a Second Coming, all true Christian believers will be saved, and non Christians will perish in one final firestorm of a battle. What is scary is that many well educated Americans actually believe in this nonsense. This political bloc is the biggest stumbling block in the way of a Middle East accord that Obama is trying to achieve.
Salams and best wishes.
Hamzah.
.............................
Dato,
The irony of it all is that all these luminaries that you mentioned, Charles Darwin,, Richard Dawkins, Stephan Hawkins, Carl Sagan and lastly Michio Kaku, were all, sadly, hard core materialists/atheists.
Without taking the accolade one bit from them as they are excellent individuals in their very specialised fields, the Muslims were actually given some inkling into the formation of the universe some 1450 years ago in the Qur'an:
"Have not those who disbelieve know that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and We made every living thing of water? Will they not then know? " [ Surah Al Anbiya , 21 : 30 ]
It is a tragedy for us Muslims that following the degeneration that began within the Ottomans, Muslims have lost the impetus of science only in the last century. Carl Sagan et al, had regain the upper hand only just now but history, whether we like it or not, is only written by the victors..
Nonetheless we Muslims should not feel dispondent. At the personal level,It is a double tragedy for brilliant chaps like Carl Sagans et al that despite the special knowledge and IQ endowed to them, they were all lost in the labyrinth, the small 'lorongs' and the byways. They missed the unifying 'mountain of evidence' staring at them. Real Happiness at the personal level, Dato, has to do with not just having superior knowledge, a six figure income and a Jaguar in the garage!. Knowledge and all that, must be tampered with 'true wisdom' since without doubt,as Muslims, we do believe Happiness ,from the Islamic viewpoint any way, has to encompass both the Here and the Hereafter.
"Lo! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the difference of night and day are tokens of His Sovereignty for men of understanding, Such as remember Allah, standing, sitting, and reclining, and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth, and say: Our Lord! Thou createdst not this in vain. Glory be to Thee! Preserve us from the doom of Fire. "
Al Imran, 3 : 190-191
Islam is about excellence. Excellence in the here and the hereafter. This century is ours, insyaallah!
Dr Nik Howk
Iftar for Class 69 MCKK.....Club YB
[ I got this email from a patient ]
Salam doc, here's something u guys will enjoy...
----- Forwarded Message ----
Sent: Thu, August 12, 2010 12:35:18 AM
..."Of Small and Big Bucks"
A mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known heart surgeon in his shop.
The surgeon was there, waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike.
The mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hey, Doc, can I ask you a question?"
The surgeon a bit surprised, walked over to the mechanic working on the motorcycle. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take valves out, fix 'em, put 'em back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I get such a small salary and you get the really big bucks, when you and I are doing basically the same work?"
The surgeon paused, smiled and leaned over, and whispered to the mechanic...
"Try doing it with the engine running."
Regards,
Shamzul.
........................
From: drnikisahak@hotmail.com
To: shamzul_p@yahoo.com; jublintan65@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: small and big bucks
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:36:28 +0800
Thanks Shamzul,
We lowly plumbers are one step more elegant than the heart surgeons!
At least they have to do it while you guys have to be 'put down' to some very 'deep sleep'.
We do it while you are listening to your favourite Sharifah Aini. When you progress to P.Ramlee's Getaran Jiwa, we are already, finished!
'Itu bisa diatur' [ can be arranged, as the Indonesian saying goes ], friend....
Dr Nik Howk
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/
see: Procedures in medicine.......Angiopasty/Stenting Vs CABG ..or rather Muhammad Ali's 'fly like a bee' to Mike Tyson aka Malik Abdul Aziz
Just pulling your leg....
We , Class of 69, Form Five Malay College had a class gathering and buka puasa at Tan Sri Saleh Sulong's Balinese-theme luxurious villa in Shah Alam last night. After a very substantive 'buka puasa juadah' we preceeded to do isyak and teraweek prayers. Midway the imam, Ustaz Nursalam of Lampong , Sumatera introduced his student,Farouk Omar, hardly 12, to give us a short tazkirah.....to some 150 mostly of the newly formed YB club [ "Yang Bersara'", newly retired... we are mostly 58 plus ]. It was a damned good tazkirah. A 12 year old, eloquent and full to the brim with confidence, he had all 150 of us listening to him with full attention. The message was deep and very soul searching....
He started with a short beautiful rendition of Surah Asr:
Sura # 104
The Declining Day
al 'Asr
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful!
"I swear by the declining day, that man is a certain loser, save those
who have faith and do righteous deeds and counsel one another to follow
the truth and counsel one another to be steadfast."
Then reminded us that indeed we are all in a state of loss!
Most ,hoarding and slaving throughout our lives for more and more material gain.
Some never stopping. Hovering over their shoulders looking right and left for more. Some even grosser and vulgar. Squandering public fund and share belonging to others, depriving the poor and the deprived.
Dining, Wine-ing, ambitious, thinking of the distant future all the time etc etc and etc.How will my children live their lives? How will their children's children lead theirs? Will my grand sons and grand daughters be adequately provided ? What about their children? Will I have more to sustain seven lifetimes to make damn sure all will be OK? etc etc and etc. No end to human wants and greed!.....
We forgot our very fragile human frailty!
A human tragedy of lust, pride and unending greed and crass materialism. Alas, much hope and ambition ,when life, as the old sufi saying goes only is about three bated breath...
One that is already gone..
The middle one that is yet to be expired out..
And the next that is truly uncertain!!
Just three bated breath, my God!...one already gone,the next one going..and the next, which truly is uncertain.
What a night...
Dr Nik Howk
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/
Salam doc, here's something u guys will enjoy...
----- Forwarded Message ----
Sent: Thu, August 12, 2010 12:35:18 AM
..."Of Small and Big Bucks"
A mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known heart surgeon in his shop.
The surgeon was there, waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike.
The mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hey, Doc, can I ask you a question?"
The surgeon a bit surprised, walked over to the mechanic working on the motorcycle. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take valves out, fix 'em, put 'em back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I get such a small salary and you get the really big bucks, when you and I are doing basically the same work?"
The surgeon paused, smiled and leaned over, and whispered to the mechanic...
"Try doing it with the engine running."
Regards,
Shamzul.
........................
From: drnikisahak@hotmail.com
To: shamzul_p@yahoo.com; jublintan65@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: small and big bucks
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:36:28 +0800
Thanks Shamzul,
We lowly plumbers are one step more elegant than the heart surgeons!
At least they have to do it while you guys have to be 'put down' to some very 'deep sleep'.
We do it while you are listening to your favourite Sharifah Aini. When you progress to P.Ramlee's Getaran Jiwa, we are already, finished!
'Itu bisa diatur' [ can be arranged, as the Indonesian saying goes ], friend....
Dr Nik Howk
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/
see: Procedures in medicine.......Angiopasty/Stenting Vs CABG ..or rather Muhammad Ali's 'fly like a bee' to Mike Tyson aka Malik Abdul Aziz
Just pulling your leg....
We , Class of 69, Form Five Malay College had a class gathering and buka puasa at Tan Sri Saleh Sulong's Balinese-theme luxurious villa in Shah Alam last night. After a very substantive 'buka puasa juadah' we preceeded to do isyak and teraweek prayers. Midway the imam, Ustaz Nursalam of Lampong , Sumatera introduced his student,Farouk Omar, hardly 12, to give us a short tazkirah.....to some 150 mostly of the newly formed YB club [ "Yang Bersara'", newly retired... we are mostly 58 plus ]. It was a damned good tazkirah. A 12 year old, eloquent and full to the brim with confidence, he had all 150 of us listening to him with full attention. The message was deep and very soul searching....
He started with a short beautiful rendition of Surah Asr:
Sura # 104
The Declining Day
al 'Asr
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful!
"I swear by the declining day, that man is a certain loser, save those
who have faith and do righteous deeds and counsel one another to follow
the truth and counsel one another to be steadfast."
Then reminded us that indeed we are all in a state of loss!
Most ,hoarding and slaving throughout our lives for more and more material gain.
Some never stopping. Hovering over their shoulders looking right and left for more. Some even grosser and vulgar. Squandering public fund and share belonging to others, depriving the poor and the deprived.
Dining, Wine-ing, ambitious, thinking of the distant future all the time etc etc and etc.How will my children live their lives? How will their children's children lead theirs? Will my grand sons and grand daughters be adequately provided ? What about their children? Will I have more to sustain seven lifetimes to make damn sure all will be OK? etc etc and etc. No end to human wants and greed!.....
We forgot our very fragile human frailty!
A human tragedy of lust, pride and unending greed and crass materialism. Alas, much hope and ambition ,when life, as the old sufi saying goes only is about three bated breath...
One that is already gone..
The middle one that is yet to be expired out..
And the next that is truly uncertain!!
Just three bated breath, my God!...one already gone,the next one going..and the next, which truly is uncertain.
What a night...
Dr Nik Howk
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Biblical Stories in The Noble Qur'an....Chapter 5, The Table Spread
Say O People of the Scripture! Ye have naught (of guidance) till ye observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto you from your Lord. That which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them. But grieve not for the disbelieving folk. (68) Lo! those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Sabaeans, and Christians - Whosoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. (69) We made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel and We sent unto them messengers. As often as a messenger came unto them with that which their souls desired not (they became rebellious). Some (of them) they denied and some they slew. (70) They thought no harm would come of it, so they were wilfully blind and deaf. And afterward Allah turned (in mercy) toward them. Now (even after that) are many of them wilfully blind and deaf. Allah is Seer of what they do. (71) They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. The Messiah (himself) said: O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Lo! whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah, for him Allah hath forbidden paradise. His abode is the Fire. For evil-doers there will be no helpers. (72) They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no God save the One God. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve. (73) Will they not rather turn unto Allah and seek forgiveness of Him? For Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. (74) The Messiah, son of Mary, was no other than a messenger, messengers (the like of whom) had passed away before him. And his mother was a saintly woman. And they both used to eat (earthly) food. See how We make the revelations clear for them, and see how they are turned away! (75) Say: Serve ye in place of Allah that which possesseth for you neither hurt nor use? Allah it is Who is the Hearer, the Knower. (76) Say: O People of the Scripture! Stress not in your religion other than the truth, and follow not the vain desires of folk who erred of old and led many astray, and erred from a plain road. (77) Those of the Children of Israel who went astray were cursed by the tongue of David, and of Jesus, son of Mary. That was because they rebelled and used to transgress. (78) They restrained not one another from the wickedness they did. Verily evil was that they used to do! (79) Thou seest many of them making friends with those who disbelieve. Surely ill for them is that which they themselves send on before them: that Allah will be wroth with them and in the doom they will abide. (80) If they believed in Allah and the Prophet and that which is revealed unto him, they would not choose them for their friends. But many of them are of evil conduct. (81) Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters. And thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud. (82) When they listen to that which hath been revealed unto the messengers, thou seest their eyes overflow with tears because of their recognition of the Truth. They say: Our Lord, we believe. Inscribe us as among the witnesses. (83) How should we not believe in Allah and that which hath come unto us of the Truth. And (how should we not) hope that our Lord will bring us in along with righteous folk? (84) Allah hath rewarded them for that their saying - Gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide for ever. That is the reward of the good. (85)
Surah Al Maeda, The Table Spread, Chapter 5, 5 : 68-85, The Noble Qur'an.
Surah Al Maeda, The Table Spread, Chapter 5, 5 : 68-85, The Noble Qur'an.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Nuggets of Wisdom.... Al An'am , 6 :59-64
"And with Him are the keys of the Invisible. None but He knoweth them. And He knoweth what is in the land and the sea. Not a leaf falleth but He knoweth it, not a grain amid the darkness of the earth, naught of wet or dry but (it is noted) in a clear record. (59) He it is Who gathereth you at night and knoweth that which ye commit by day. Then He raiseth you again to life therein, that the term appointed (for you) may be accomplished. And afterward unto Him is your return. Then He will proclaim unto you what ye used to do. (60) He is the Omnipotent over His slaves. He sendeth guardians over you until, when death cometh unto one of you, Our messengers receive him, and they neglect not. (61) Then are they restored unto Allah, their Lord, the Just. Surely His is the judgment. And He is the most swift of reckoners. (62) Say: Who delivereth you from the darkness of the land and the sea? Ye call upon Him humbly and in secret, (saying): If we are delivered from this (fear) we truly will be of the thankful. (63) Say: Allah delivereth you from this and from all affliction. Yet ye attribute partners unto Him." [64]
Al An'am , Chapter 6, The Noble Qur'an
Real important issues in life are usually very simple and precise. The dichotomy is so clear cut. Are you with Me or are you not with Me? If you are with Me, are you as muddled,confused and totally lost like the Trinitarians and the rest of the flock [ secularists, agnostics and atheists ], or are you too, as proud and too pig headed as the people of Bani Nadir of old?
If you are, just be forewarned, as an assembly of jinns did conceded some 1450 years ago:
"And there are among us some who have surrendered (to Allah)
and there are among us some who are unjust.
And whoso hath surrendered to Allah, such have taken the right path purposefully.
And as for those who are unjust, they are firewood for hell."
Al Jinn , Chapter 72 , 14-15
Al An'am , Chapter 6, The Noble Qur'an
Real important issues in life are usually very simple and precise. The dichotomy is so clear cut. Are you with Me or are you not with Me? If you are with Me, are you as muddled,confused and totally lost like the Trinitarians and the rest of the flock [ secularists, agnostics and atheists ], or are you too, as proud and too pig headed as the people of Bani Nadir of old?
If you are, just be forewarned, as an assembly of jinns did conceded some 1450 years ago:
"And there are among us some who have surrendered (to Allah)
and there are among us some who are unjust.
And whoso hath surrendered to Allah, such have taken the right path purposefully.
And as for those who are unjust, they are firewood for hell."
Al Jinn , Chapter 72 , 14-15
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani...The Secret of Secrets
When one mention the word 'sufi saint' in Malaysia especially, the ordinary man will conjure up images of special people who can 'walk' on water or be in two places at one time or 'fly' off to the Haram at a moments notice. Very few take the trouble to read or tranlate what they preach and teach. It is to people like Muchtar Holland, Shyaikh Tosun Barack al-Jerahi et al that we owe much for bringing to us the thoughts and teaching of venerable sufi sheikhs like Ibnu Arabi, Rumi, Rabiatul Adawiyah, and Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al Jilani et al. Otherwise their thoughts ,writings and teaching would have been lost to present day audience.
The Venerable Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al Jilani [ born 470 AH, 1077-78CE ]had had volumes written on his teaching and lectures [ Utterances, Futuh al Ghaib or 'Revelations of the Unseen',Ghunyat al Talibun or 'Wealth for Seekers'] . But in Sirr al Asrar or ' Secret of Secrets' perhaps lies the primer before one could understandably graduate to the more difficult works of The Utterances, The Revelations and 'The Wealth for Seekers'.
Let us for a brief momemt transport ourselves into the mind of the Sheikh on the issue of the 'Muslim Fast', as very well translated into English by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al Jerahi in ' Secret of Secrets' :
...........
The fasting prescribed by the religion is to abstain from eating and drinking and sexual intercourse from dawn to sunset while spiritual fasting is, in addition, to protect all the senses and thoughts from all that is unlawful. It is to abandon all that is disharmonious, inwardly as well as outwardly. The slightest breach of that intention breaks the fast. Religious fasting is limited by time, while spiritual fasting is forever and lasts throughout one's temporal and eternal life. This is true fasting.
Our Master the prophet says," There are many of those who fast get only hunger and thirst for their efforts and no other benefit". There are also those who break their fast when they eat, and those whose fast continues even after they have eaten. These are the ones who keep their senses and their thoughts free of evil and their hands and their tongues from hurting others. It is for these that Allah Most High promises, " Fasting is a deed done for My sake, and I am the one who give its reward."
About the two kinds of fasting our Master the Prophet says, " The one who fast has two satisfactions. One is when he breaks his fast at the end of the day. The other is when he sees."
Those who know the outer form of the religion say that the first satisfaction of the one who fast is the pleasure of eating after a day of fasting, and the meaning of the satisfaction 'when he sees' is when someone who fasted the whole month of Ramadan sees the new moon marking the end of the fast and beginning of festivities of the holiday. The ones who know the inner meaning of fasting say that the joy of breaking the fast is the day when the believer will enter paradise and partake of the delights therein, and the meaning of the greater joy of seeing is when the faithful sees the truth of Allah with the secret eye of the heart.
Worthier than these two kinds of fasting is the fast of truth, which is in preventing the heart from worshipping any other than the Essence of Allah. It is performed by rendering the eye of the heart blind to all that exist, even in the secret realms outside of this world, except the love of Allah. For even though Allah has created all and everything for man, He has created man only for Himself., and He says, " Man is My secret and I am his secret". That secret is a light from the divine light of Allah. It is the centre of the heart, made out of the finest of matter. It is the soul which know all the secret truths; it is the secret connection between the created one and his Creator. That secret does not love nor lean towards anything other than Allah.
There is nothing worthy to wish for, there is no other goal, no other beloved in this world and in the hereafter, except Allah. If an atom of anything other than the love of Allah enters the heart, the fast of truth, the true fast, is broken. Then one has to make it up, revive that wish and intention, to return back to His love, here and in the hereafter. For Allah says: " Fasting is only for Me, and only I give its reward".
...................
Huwallahualam!
May your Ramadan and mine be a blessed one!
Dr Nik Howk
The Venerable Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al Jilani [ born 470 AH, 1077-78CE ]had had volumes written on his teaching and lectures [ Utterances, Futuh al Ghaib or 'Revelations of the Unseen',Ghunyat al Talibun or 'Wealth for Seekers'] . But in Sirr al Asrar or ' Secret of Secrets' perhaps lies the primer before one could understandably graduate to the more difficult works of The Utterances, The Revelations and 'The Wealth for Seekers'.
Let us for a brief momemt transport ourselves into the mind of the Sheikh on the issue of the 'Muslim Fast', as very well translated into English by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al Jerahi in ' Secret of Secrets' :
...........
The fasting prescribed by the religion is to abstain from eating and drinking and sexual intercourse from dawn to sunset while spiritual fasting is, in addition, to protect all the senses and thoughts from all that is unlawful. It is to abandon all that is disharmonious, inwardly as well as outwardly. The slightest breach of that intention breaks the fast. Religious fasting is limited by time, while spiritual fasting is forever and lasts throughout one's temporal and eternal life. This is true fasting.
Our Master the prophet says," There are many of those who fast get only hunger and thirst for their efforts and no other benefit". There are also those who break their fast when they eat, and those whose fast continues even after they have eaten. These are the ones who keep their senses and their thoughts free of evil and their hands and their tongues from hurting others. It is for these that Allah Most High promises, " Fasting is a deed done for My sake, and I am the one who give its reward."
About the two kinds of fasting our Master the Prophet says, " The one who fast has two satisfactions. One is when he breaks his fast at the end of the day. The other is when he sees."
Those who know the outer form of the religion say that the first satisfaction of the one who fast is the pleasure of eating after a day of fasting, and the meaning of the satisfaction 'when he sees' is when someone who fasted the whole month of Ramadan sees the new moon marking the end of the fast and beginning of festivities of the holiday. The ones who know the inner meaning of fasting say that the joy of breaking the fast is the day when the believer will enter paradise and partake of the delights therein, and the meaning of the greater joy of seeing is when the faithful sees the truth of Allah with the secret eye of the heart.
Worthier than these two kinds of fasting is the fast of truth, which is in preventing the heart from worshipping any other than the Essence of Allah. It is performed by rendering the eye of the heart blind to all that exist, even in the secret realms outside of this world, except the love of Allah. For even though Allah has created all and everything for man, He has created man only for Himself., and He says, " Man is My secret and I am his secret". That secret is a light from the divine light of Allah. It is the centre of the heart, made out of the finest of matter. It is the soul which know all the secret truths; it is the secret connection between the created one and his Creator. That secret does not love nor lean towards anything other than Allah.
There is nothing worthy to wish for, there is no other goal, no other beloved in this world and in the hereafter, except Allah. If an atom of anything other than the love of Allah enters the heart, the fast of truth, the true fast, is broken. Then one has to make it up, revive that wish and intention, to return back to His love, here and in the hereafter. For Allah says: " Fasting is only for Me, and only I give its reward".
...................
Huwallahualam!
May your Ramadan and mine be a blessed one!
Dr Nik Howk
Diary.....
Just came back from Hong Kong. Spent an extended weekend discussing 'Cardiometabolic issues in Metabolic Syndrome' with the best of Asian, Australian and European endocrine and cardiological minds. Namely to put it bluntly 'the effect of obesity, glutony, increasing sedentariness in our lifestyle and as a result, diabetes, strokes, hypertension and kidney dysfunction leading to a much truncated lifespan'...a topic to be discussed in future articles.....
Pearls and Gem must have gone places or perhaps I look like a 'hot blooded Pashtun' or like that 'Khalid' chap from Pakistan: I was 'randomly' checked twice by the efficient Hong Kong securities at the airport, on entry and at exit...At least they were rather very straightforward and go about their job with mechanical efficiency, sparring out the hypocritical approach of the Australians who will start with " Sorry sir, this is just purely random that we choose you, we have some question to ask you blah blah blah....".I was picked 'randomly' on entry and exit three times out of three, Down Under. So much for random check.
The big issue in Hong Kong today was of Amina Bhokary. A young lady with high education and connection let off scott's free by the court after her 3rd incidence of abusing the police: she slapped them in public. Her defence was that she is a manic depressive...Still a weak excuse for a third offence. A huge public out cry. Reminded me that the Hongkies are still very much British in their outlook.
Two full pages in South China Gazzete of the dissent of building of mosques in New York and elsewhere in the States. Despite the 14th Amendment. The Americans perhaps should take a leaf or two from us in Malaysia: we have thousands of churches and temples and probably over 40,000 'kuils' everywhere and anywhere,some side by side to mosques. The other day while riding in Elmina Estate I counted there are over 15 'kuils'..we Malaysians do not make a big deal over it except when it encroaches on public land for yrgent development and is illegal.
Why talk big about the 14th Amendment when deep down you guys are so intolerant??!!
Safely back on home territory I was welcomed home by an unpleasant feeling.After Hong Kong Airport, our KLIA looked today 'very sparse' at 6 pm local time. I counted only 10 jet liners,90 % Malaysian. So much for 'Best Airport 3 Years in a Row!'.Another land clearing on the entrance of KLIA heralding another terminal for the LCCT. My God! We never stop building even when our present airport is half empty..
Then a pleasant taxi ride to Subang Jaya..Malaysia, the Best of Asia..still OK..One kilometre down the highway.....my God!...1Malaysia emblazoned across the skyline ....how can we ever have 1Malaysia with 3 school systems early on running parallel in the education of our youth! When even the wawasan concept as put forward by Dr M [ means just 'sharing' the same compound, not yet the same curricullum ] brought so much anger and displeasure, let us all forget about 1Malaysia...It is an idiotic concept and a waste of time if one side is not willing to give an inch for the sake of national unity.
The 1Malaysia ad reminded me once again of Hong Kong that I just left. A loud group of Indonesian Chinese dining near my table in Hotel Excelsior Hong Kong, were conversing 100 % Indonesian language,of all the place in Chinese Hong Kong, to the chagrin of other chinese looking people around them..... We have somehow missed the boat! Let us think of something else apart from 1Malaysia.
The irony of it all.... I know I am now back home in Malaysia.
Pearls and Gem must have gone places or perhaps I look like a 'hot blooded Pashtun' or like that 'Khalid' chap from Pakistan: I was 'randomly' checked twice by the efficient Hong Kong securities at the airport, on entry and at exit...At least they were rather very straightforward and go about their job with mechanical efficiency, sparring out the hypocritical approach of the Australians who will start with " Sorry sir, this is just purely random that we choose you, we have some question to ask you blah blah blah....".I was picked 'randomly' on entry and exit three times out of three, Down Under. So much for random check.
The big issue in Hong Kong today was of Amina Bhokary. A young lady with high education and connection let off scott's free by the court after her 3rd incidence of abusing the police: she slapped them in public. Her defence was that she is a manic depressive...Still a weak excuse for a third offence. A huge public out cry. Reminded me that the Hongkies are still very much British in their outlook.
Two full pages in South China Gazzete of the dissent of building of mosques in New York and elsewhere in the States. Despite the 14th Amendment. The Americans perhaps should take a leaf or two from us in Malaysia: we have thousands of churches and temples and probably over 40,000 'kuils' everywhere and anywhere,some side by side to mosques. The other day while riding in Elmina Estate I counted there are over 15 'kuils'..we Malaysians do not make a big deal over it except when it encroaches on public land for yrgent development and is illegal.
Why talk big about the 14th Amendment when deep down you guys are so intolerant??!!
Safely back on home territory I was welcomed home by an unpleasant feeling.After Hong Kong Airport, our KLIA looked today 'very sparse' at 6 pm local time. I counted only 10 jet liners,90 % Malaysian. So much for 'Best Airport 3 Years in a Row!'.Another land clearing on the entrance of KLIA heralding another terminal for the LCCT. My God! We never stop building even when our present airport is half empty..
Then a pleasant taxi ride to Subang Jaya..Malaysia, the Best of Asia..still OK..One kilometre down the highway.....my God!...1Malaysia emblazoned across the skyline ....how can we ever have 1Malaysia with 3 school systems early on running parallel in the education of our youth! When even the wawasan concept as put forward by Dr M [ means just 'sharing' the same compound, not yet the same curricullum ] brought so much anger and displeasure, let us all forget about 1Malaysia...It is an idiotic concept and a waste of time if one side is not willing to give an inch for the sake of national unity.
The 1Malaysia ad reminded me once again of Hong Kong that I just left. A loud group of Indonesian Chinese dining near my table in Hotel Excelsior Hong Kong, were conversing 100 % Indonesian language,of all the place in Chinese Hong Kong, to the chagrin of other chinese looking people around them..... We have somehow missed the boat! Let us think of something else apart from 1Malaysia.
The irony of it all.... I know I am now back home in Malaysia.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Israel Has crept into EU....Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk: Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing
Middle East
*The Independent, Saturday, 31 July 2010*
The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this
week raised scarcely a headline.
There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now
imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania
this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now
mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that
justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago –
more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and
terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot
each other by mistake).
But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South
African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath
that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly
called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in
the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a
question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an
army accused of war crimes?
Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to
the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book
to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to
present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just
finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his
preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to
the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union
in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the
EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said
last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union
without being a member of the institution".
Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to
happen? Does David Cameron – now so forcefully marketing Turkish entry to
the EU – agree with this? Probably yes, since he goes on calling himself a
"friend of Israel" after that country produced an excellent set of forged
British passports for its murderers in Dubai. As Cronin says, "the EU's
cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the robust position it has
taken when major atrocities have occurred in other conflicts". After the
Russia-Georgia war in 2008, for example, the EU tasked an independent
mission to find out if international law had been flouted, and demanded an
international inquiry into human rights abuses after Sri Lanka's war against
the Tamil Tigers. Cronin does not duck Europe's responsibility for the
Jewish Holocaust and agrees that there will always be a "moral duty" on our
governments to ensure it never happens again – though I did notice that
Cameron forgot to mention the 1915 Armenian Holocaust when he was sucking up
to the Turks this week.
But that's not quite the point. In 1999, Britain's arms sales to Israel – a
country occupying the West Bank (and Gaza, too) and building illegal
colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – were worth £11.5m; within two
years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms,
grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks. There were a
few refusals after Israel used modified Centurion tanks against the
Palestinians in 2002, but in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered
another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade
against Hizbollah's "world terror", Britain granted over 200 weapons
licences.
Some British equipment, of course, heads for Israel via the US. In 2002,
Britain gave "head-up displays" manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed
Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for
Israel. The EU did not object. In the same year, it should be added, the
British admitted to training 13 members of the Israeli military. US planes
transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were
refuelled at British airports (and, alas, it appears at Irish airports too).
In the first three months of 2008, we gave licenses for another £20m of
weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Apache
helicopters used against Palestinians, says Cronin, contain parts made by
SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page
Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.
Need I go on? Israel, by the way, has been praised for its "logistics" help
to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans
than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since
Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in
Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato. And Cronin convincingly argues
an extraordinary – almost obscenely beautiful – financial arrangement in
"Palestine". The EU funds millions of pounds' worth of projects in Gaza.
These are regularly destroyed by Israel's American-made weaponry. So it goes
like this. European taxpayers fork out for the projects. US taxpayers fork
out for the weapons which Israel uses to destroy them. Then EU taxpayers
fork out for the whole lot to be rebuilt. And then US taxpayers... Well,
you've got the point. Israel, by the way, already has an "individual
co-operation programme" with Nato, locking Israel into Nato's computer
networks.
All in all, it's good to have such a stout ally as Israel on our side, even
if its army is a rabble and some of its men war criminals. Come to that, why
don't we ask Hizbollah to join Nato as well – just imagine how its guerrilla
tactics would benefit our chaps in Helmand. And since Israel's Apache
helicopters often kill Lebanese civilians – a whole ambulance of women and
children in 1996, for example, blown to pieces by a Boeing Hellfire AGM 114C
air-to-ground missile – let's hope the Lebanese can still send a friendly
greeting to the people of Nottinghamshire, Middlesex, Hampshire and, of
course, Cheltenham.
[....This should be nothing new to us because Israel anyway was EU's baby which arise from their collective guilt of The Holoucast. Just make the 'stupid, Arab bastards collect the tab in posterity. Serve them right anyway for having people like Salahuddin Al Ayyubi in their midst ....Desraeli perhaps could have thought this way. '. History, and the 8 o'clock news, anyway, is written and transcripted by the victors.
My point is we do not need people like Cronin or Fisk to tell us what is going on there. We just take a short walk into history.....AND YET WE ARE STILL OK WHEN OUR BOYS AND GIRLS, irrespective of their 'niat' or ignorance ,go around walking this 'earth' in their favourite EU club football jerseys revealing the CROSS. We are OK even when NATO soldiers and American drones bomb and napalm those poor Afghans and Pakis peasants in their homes for the simple reason that these ignorant folks want to practice their brand of Islam rather than some unheard of system called 'demoncracy' when some village idiots also has the same weightage as the 'Khans' and the provincial ulama'.
To the modern secular 'crusaders' from NATO and US of A, anyone wearing turbans or spotting a goatee are reasonable targets. Their children are potential fundamentalists and terrorist. So no one should lose any sleep over them. Collateral damage such as this is just a necessary evil...Or was it Hilary Clinton the other day who uttered," thousands of Afghans life lost are worthwhile, if one day an Afghan woman can lift up her skirt in public to show her thigh without running the risk of the demonic Sharia'...perhaps this is just words playing in my head.
Perhaps Afghanistan is better served when the Americans and the rest of the 'crusaders' finally can come to term with the fact that, when come to faith, one cannot really beat Islam! I am saying Islam here categorically, not Muslims. Of the latter,we seem to still be a total mess! One has to learn how to live with Islam ...perhaps more peacefully than ever before.]
And we are OK...We are still OK....]
Middle East
*The Independent, Saturday, 31 July 2010*
The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this
week raised scarcely a headline.
There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now
imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania
this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now
mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that
justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago –
more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and
terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot
each other by mistake).
But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South
African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath
that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly
called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in
the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a
question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an
army accused of war crimes?
Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to
the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book
to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to
present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just
finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his
preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to
the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union
in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the
EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said
last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union
without being a member of the institution".
Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to
happen? Does David Cameron – now so forcefully marketing Turkish entry to
the EU – agree with this? Probably yes, since he goes on calling himself a
"friend of Israel" after that country produced an excellent set of forged
British passports for its murderers in Dubai. As Cronin says, "the EU's
cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the robust position it has
taken when major atrocities have occurred in other conflicts". After the
Russia-Georgia war in 2008, for example, the EU tasked an independent
mission to find out if international law had been flouted, and demanded an
international inquiry into human rights abuses after Sri Lanka's war against
the Tamil Tigers. Cronin does not duck Europe's responsibility for the
Jewish Holocaust and agrees that there will always be a "moral duty" on our
governments to ensure it never happens again – though I did notice that
Cameron forgot to mention the 1915 Armenian Holocaust when he was sucking up
to the Turks this week.
But that's not quite the point. In 1999, Britain's arms sales to Israel – a
country occupying the West Bank (and Gaza, too) and building illegal
colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – were worth £11.5m; within two
years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms,
grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks. There were a
few refusals after Israel used modified Centurion tanks against the
Palestinians in 2002, but in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered
another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade
against Hizbollah's "world terror", Britain granted over 200 weapons
licences.
Some British equipment, of course, heads for Israel via the US. In 2002,
Britain gave "head-up displays" manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed
Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for
Israel. The EU did not object. In the same year, it should be added, the
British admitted to training 13 members of the Israeli military. US planes
transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were
refuelled at British airports (and, alas, it appears at Irish airports too).
In the first three months of 2008, we gave licenses for another £20m of
weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Apache
helicopters used against Palestinians, says Cronin, contain parts made by
SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page
Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.
Need I go on? Israel, by the way, has been praised for its "logistics" help
to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans
than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since
Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in
Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato. And Cronin convincingly argues
an extraordinary – almost obscenely beautiful – financial arrangement in
"Palestine". The EU funds millions of pounds' worth of projects in Gaza.
These are regularly destroyed by Israel's American-made weaponry. So it goes
like this. European taxpayers fork out for the projects. US taxpayers fork
out for the weapons which Israel uses to destroy them. Then EU taxpayers
fork out for the whole lot to be rebuilt. And then US taxpayers... Well,
you've got the point. Israel, by the way, already has an "individual
co-operation programme" with Nato, locking Israel into Nato's computer
networks.
All in all, it's good to have such a stout ally as Israel on our side, even
if its army is a rabble and some of its men war criminals. Come to that, why
don't we ask Hizbollah to join Nato as well – just imagine how its guerrilla
tactics would benefit our chaps in Helmand. And since Israel's Apache
helicopters often kill Lebanese civilians – a whole ambulance of women and
children in 1996, for example, blown to pieces by a Boeing Hellfire AGM 114C
air-to-ground missile – let's hope the Lebanese can still send a friendly
greeting to the people of Nottinghamshire, Middlesex, Hampshire and, of
course, Cheltenham.
[....This should be nothing new to us because Israel anyway was EU's baby which arise from their collective guilt of The Holoucast. Just make the 'stupid, Arab bastards collect the tab in posterity. Serve them right anyway for having people like Salahuddin Al Ayyubi in their midst ....Desraeli perhaps could have thought this way. '. History, and the 8 o'clock news, anyway, is written and transcripted by the victors.
My point is we do not need people like Cronin or Fisk to tell us what is going on there. We just take a short walk into history.....AND YET WE ARE STILL OK WHEN OUR BOYS AND GIRLS, irrespective of their 'niat' or ignorance ,go around walking this 'earth' in their favourite EU club football jerseys revealing the CROSS. We are OK even when NATO soldiers and American drones bomb and napalm those poor Afghans and Pakis peasants in their homes for the simple reason that these ignorant folks want to practice their brand of Islam rather than some unheard of system called 'demoncracy' when some village idiots also has the same weightage as the 'Khans' and the provincial ulama'.
To the modern secular 'crusaders' from NATO and US of A, anyone wearing turbans or spotting a goatee are reasonable targets. Their children are potential fundamentalists and terrorist. So no one should lose any sleep over them. Collateral damage such as this is just a necessary evil...Or was it Hilary Clinton the other day who uttered," thousands of Afghans life lost are worthwhile, if one day an Afghan woman can lift up her skirt in public to show her thigh without running the risk of the demonic Sharia'...perhaps this is just words playing in my head.
Perhaps Afghanistan is better served when the Americans and the rest of the 'crusaders' finally can come to term with the fact that, when come to faith, one cannot really beat Islam! I am saying Islam here categorically, not Muslims. Of the latter,we seem to still be a total mess! One has to learn how to live with Islam ...perhaps more peacefully than ever before.]
And we are OK...We are still OK....]
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Biblical Stories in The Noble Qur'an : An Nisa [ Women ] , 4 : 153-176
The people of the Scripture ask of thee that thou shouldst cause an (actual) Book to descend upon them from heaven. They asked a greater thing of Moses aforetime, for they said: Show us Allah plainly. The storm of lightning seized them for their wickedness. Then (even) after that) they chose the calf (for worship) after clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty) had come unto them. And We forgave them that! And We bestowed on Moses evident authority. (153) And We caused the Mount to tower above them at (the taking of) their covenant: and We bade them: Enter the gate, prostrate! and We bade them: Transgress not the Sabbath! and We took from them a firm covenant. (154) Then because of their breaking of their covenant, and their disbelieving in the revelations of Allah, and their slaying of the prophets wrongfully, and their saying: Our hearts are hardened - Nay, but Allah set a seal upon them for their disbelief, so that they believe not save a few - (155) And because of their disbelief and of their speaking against Mary a tremendous calumny; (156) And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. (157) But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. (158) There is not one of the People of the Scripture but will believe in him before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them - (159) Because of the wrongdoing of the Jews We forbade them good things which were (before) made lawful unto them, and because of their much hindering from Allah's way, (160) And of their taking usury when they were forbidden it, and of their devouring people's wealth by false pretences, We have prepared for those of them who disbelieve a painful doom. (161) But those of them who are firm in knowledge and the believers believe in that which is revealed unto thee, and that which was revealed before thee, especially the diligent in prayer and those who pay the poor-due, the believers in Allah and the Last Day. Upon these We shall bestow immense reward. (162) Lo! We inspire thee as We inspired Noah and the prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as We imparted unto David the Psalms; (163) And messengers We have mentioned unto thee before and messengers We have not mentioned unto thee; and Allah spake directly unto Moses; (164) Messengers of good cheer and of warning, in order that mankind might have no argument against Allah after the messengers. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. (165) But Allah (Himself) testifieth concerning that which He hath revealed unto thee; in His knowledge hath He revealed it; and the Angels also testify. And Allah is sufficient Witness. (166) Lo! those who disbelieve and hinder (others) from the way of Allah, they verily have wandered far astray. (167) Lo! those who disbelieve and deal in wrong, Allah will never forgive them, neither will He guide them unto a road, (168) Except the road of hell, wherein they will abide for ever. And that is ever easy for Allah. (169) O mankind! The messenger hath come unto you with the Truth from your Lord. Therefor believe; (it is) better for you. But if ye disbelieve, still, lo! unto Allah belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and the earth. Allah is ever Knower, Wise. (170) O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not "Three" - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One God. Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender. (171) The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah, nor will the favoured angels. Whoso scorneth His service and is proud, all such will He assemble unto Him; (172) Then, as for those who believed and did good works, unto them will He pay their wages in full, adding unto them of His bounty; and as for those who were scornful and proud, them will He punish with a painful doom. And they will not find for them, against Allah, any protecting friend or helper. (173) O mankind! Now hath a proof from your Lord come unto you, and We have sent down unto you a clear light; (174) As for those who believe in Allah, and hold fast unto Him, them He will cause to enter into His mercy and grace, and will guide them unto Him by a straight road. (175) They ask thee for a pronouncement. Say: Allah hath pronounced for you concerning distant kindred. If a man die childless and he have a sister, hers is half the heritage, and he would have inherited from her had she died childless. And if there be two sisters, then theirs are two-thirds of the heritage, and if they be brethren, men and women, unto the male is the equivalent of the share of two females. Allah expoundeth unto you, so that ye err not. Allah is Knower of all things. (176)
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