There r two Camps; choose urs..

There are two camps; the God camp and the no-God camp. Pitfalls lie in both camps. It is the innate humanity that makes a difference whether one is religious or otherwise. Triumphant are those who purify and ennoble their humanity and dignify their character. The secularists may have their own motivation but a definite vantage for a religious mind is the understanding that he is ultimately answerable to the creator for his deeds and that his wrongdoings will have repercussions. But right there looms a pitfall of acting like God forgetting that all, irrespective of creed, color or race, are from a single pair of male and female. The path of piety and godliness goes from humanity. Bypassing that is indeed a cancerous phenomenon for the innate dignity of human soul. The edge for the non-religious is the pitfall of the religious and vantage of religious is the pitfall for the atheists which in the long run is by far a greater risk to fall in.

وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا  قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا  وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا 

 And the soul bears witness and the perfection given to it. Then [God] inspired it with its evil and its good that he succeeded who purified it and he failed who corrupted it. (91:7-10)

وَمَنْ يَأْتِهِ مُؤْمِنًا قَدْ عَمِلَ الصَّالِحَاتِ فَأُوْلَئِكَ لَهُمُ الدَّرَجَاتُ الْعُلَى  جَنَّاتُ عَدْنٍ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا وَذَلِكَ جَزَاء مَن تَزَكَّى 

And he who comes before Him as a believer having done righteous deeds, exalted ranks are for such people, evergreen gardens beneath which streams flow. They shall abide therein forever and this shall be the reward of those that keep themselves pure. (20:75-76)

Way forward for a discourse....

The Criteria for understanding the delineation of Islamic laws and principles are Quran and Sunnah.In my view this criterion must develop in parallel with advancement of human intellect in certain spheres.But the attitude of such delineation is of paramount importance. It, under no circumstance, should be that of a polemic or belittlement of the past scholars in any way. They have done their job in a tremendous way. Their dedication and commitment to understanding the true spirit of God's religion is beyond any doubt. Their respect and veneration must be depicted in our comments otherwise this entire effort is doomed to failure.

Having said that, their means and opinions must always be open to evaluation in the light of Quran and Sunnah to all people of all ages. They were never pertinacious on their thoughts and were always ready to revisit them. They all accepted the possibility that their views might turn out to be incorrect as the great exegete Imam Shafi once said,"‎I am convinced about the veracity of my opinions, but I do consider it likely that they may turn out to be incorrect. Likewise, I am convinced about the incorrectness of the views different from mine, but I do concede the possibility that they may turn out to be correct." 

Imagine that the genome is a book.

In his marvelous book, Genome, Matt Ridley wrote:
“Imagine that the genome is a book. There are 23 chapters, called chromosomes. Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called genes. Each story is made up of paragraphs called exons, which are interrupted by advertisements called introns. Each paragraph is made up of words called codons. Each word written in letters are called bases, which are Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine, Thiamine or shortly A,G,T,C.”

Wali Khan Baber and the Geo team

The silence of Geo anchors after the killers were exposed by Zulfiqar Mirza,is flabbergasting. Now that Zulfiqar Mirza has declared without any ambiguity that Wali Baber was killed by goons from MQM, its high time that Geo and the entire media should take a firm stand against this ruthless and fascist party. Its preposterous and disgusting that the media that is so loud and boisterous against other parties and organizations is so shamelessly and impotently quiet in the face of threats from MQM. Alas if only Wali Khan Baber could see how his cronies were backing down.:(