An orthodoxy article in Shodalap
Setara Hashem
Shodalap is not a forum, but an inclusive e-journal for Bangladeshis at home and abroad. So one can post his/her write-up abiding by some rules and restrictions. This website is not a religious journal, nor an Islam basher or a fanatic Islam follower. It condemns orthodoxy in Islam and fight against trading and politicizing of Islam.
Md Jamilul Basar is a rising writer of Shodalap, who is fighting against fanaticism and orthodoxy of Islam and fanatic atheism. He is an honest and progressive writer. He has his own vision of looking at Islam in the context of history and society. All foods or all cloths are not for all people, similarly all write-ups are not for all people. Understanding of some write-ups sometimes require knowledge of history, social phenomenon and its development in the context of time. The article under heading “Crazy write-ups in Shodalap” is lack of that knowledge. The writer of the above mentioned article has not even learnt manners. Before measuring depth of knowledge of others, one should know depth of his knowledge. It appears that the newcomer writer of Shodalap is not even aware of the depth of his own knowledge.
Religion such as Islam is neither an accidental phenomenon of history nor did it descend from the sky. Religions are collective knowledge of human civilization of ancient society. Environment of ancient human society and level of human knowledge of the time helped to grow religion. With the change of social environment and development of human knowledge in the context of time, different religions appeared in the society during different time. Islam is the last one with the gist of all previous religions. Mr. Basar maintains this scientific view, which goes against religious orthodoxy and fanatic atheism.
Language did not come from sky. It represents sound-making by human to communicate with one another. Human being created alphabets to represent sounds they made. Modern civilization was first grown in Mesopotamia. Written form of language developed by Mesopotamian is called proto Semitic. Hebrew language belongs to this group. Modern Semitic languages are descendents of proto Semitic. Arabic belongs to Semitic language's group. Original language of Aryans, who invaded southwestern Asia including Persia (Present Iran) and northwestern India, was Veda. Their language was mixed with respective local languages and was transformed into Zoroastrian, Prakrit, Apabhramshi and other languages. All these languages are grouped into Indo-European Language. Farsi, a descendant of Zoroastrian language, has been influenced and enriched by Semitic language including Arabic. Farsi is using proto Semitic sound and Arabic form of alphabets. Sanskrit is reformed name of Veda. Hindi, a mixture of Prakrit and Apabhramshi languages, has been influenced and enriched by Dravidian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portugees and English. Urdu is a mixture of Farsi and Hindi languages and uses Farsi alphabets. There were a few languages in ancient time and lots of common words were being used in those languages, which are found in different religious books. Mr. Basar has mentioned a few of those words in his write-up. It is unfortunate that due to shallow knowledge of history of language, this orthodox newcomer rebutted logical afford of Mr. Basar.
The secular writers visualize religion as a historical and social phenomenon. Religion is human heritage and history. Therefore, it should be protected from orthodoxy, political Islam, and religious & atheist fanatics for forward march of civilization and human social development.
To find out the Editor of Shodalap is not a difficult job, if one is not in deep sleep. Mr. Abdullah Al Amin may kindly wake up and try to find out the Editor. My earnest request to him, not to cross the limit of manners in his future articles and try to write with logic doing homework.
Setara Hashem
05/26/05