madhav

>>Does that mean we should not discuss spiritual topics at all, since we are not "very high" ?<< no. discussion as well as practice, bith are needed.

>>You mean, it is is not the business of Gaudiya Vaishnavas to bother with Mukti.<< Yes, any bhakta does bhakti without desire for mukti. that is supermost bhakti. to do bhakti for mukti is not best, but still a lot better than no bhakti. bhakti is the end and the means. a pure bhakta does not care for mukti, but it comes to him as a side product, no doubt. mukti means freedom from birth after births.

>>You mean, it is is not the business of Gaudiya Vaishnavas to bother with Mukti.<< Yes, any bhakta does bhakti without desire for mukti. that is supermost bhakti. to do bhakti for mukti is not best, but still a lot better than no bhakti. bhakti is the end and the means. a pure bhakta does not care for mukti, but it comes to him as a side product, no doubt. mukti means freedom from birth after births.

sat naam vaahe guru! = sikhs say this like we say hare krishna. = May god keep you happy. = How it happened that you became disciple of patelji? = I would listen if you tel it. = It is ok if you could not tell it. i think i would stick with english from now on, as it is not fun to give translation each time. although i never have intention to talk something of importance in a language no one understands.

sardarji, sat naam vaahe guru! bhagavan aapako sukhi rakhe. ye kaise huvaa ki aap patelji ke chela ban gaye. aap kahenge to sunugaa. naa kahen to bhi thik hai.

please pick a good user name. that makes it easy to figure who is talking and with whom you are talking.

>>People can still have vigrous debates on philosophy, but maybe over bread and drink instead of fire bombs and stones. << yes, and the muslims have not shown such inclination in india. well, they will take over your land first brutally, and then will tell, "let us talk." mean while they will keep harming you even more. i am sure you know how Kargil war happened.

>>I work at a convenience store. They sell meat and alcohol. I don't eat meat, engage in illicit sex, gamble or induce alcohol or any other intoxicants (except I do drink soda-pop). << very good! >>After doing a complete mental analysis of the people that live in my region I have come to the conclusion there is no possible way I could convince them all to become vegetarians and to quit smoking and drinking and if I tried too hard they would likely kill me or have me committed to a mental hospital.<< Then do not try. Some more advanced devotee could help them, but only if they are willing to have friendly association with him. They will suffer due to bad karma, nd sooer or later, in this or some future lives they will torn towards spiritualotuy. Try to find a job that keeps you away from such company and where you do are not required to sell meat, wine, porn etc. May Krishna help you. >> The only other bad habit I have is that I like to play video games. << That is not good. it wastes your time, money and spoils mind. Find some games without violence, sex etc. Read pastimes of Krishna where he fought many asuras. >>Other than that I just go to work and go home. I regularly chant Hare Krishna and I feel good but I just want to make sure I am not going to go to hell.<< Not likely, but it is better to increase chanting and decrease not so good activities. >> I realize some of the elements in my life are not completely auspicious but most of those things I would change if possible but it would not be possible without creating a major social disturbance. << Seek association of devotees. Krishna will guide/help thru them.

>>Noted Sri Vaishnava scholars such as Lakshmitattacharya-ji of the Melkote Sanskrit Academy are of the opinion that the Gaudiya line is a branch of the Ramanuja sampradaya and not the Madhva line<< If Gaudia Madhva Sampradya records and authorities say that the lineage is from Madhva, then there is no reason to believe otherwise.

>>Why not let everyone go the the house of worship they choose. Churches Mosques ans Temples side by side? << Why Saudi Arabia allows no religion other than Islam? Why Islamists attacked Akshardham and Raghunath temples? Why the Hindus allowed invader Islam to stay in India? Why the Hindus divided the nation in 1947? Who are tolerant and intolernt? What does Koran say about how to treat Kafirs? What does Gita say about spreading dharma? Which of the two message shows tolerance?

>>There must be a legitamite belief or grievance to provoke someone to take over a cockpit and crash a plane into a tower.<< Yes, the belief is Islam, and the world knows it. How much you know about Islam please? What good reasons you found why Islam invaded India and caused many Hindu genocide and destroyed temples? What does Koran and Hadith say to a Muslim how to treat a kafir? What a Muslims wants to get in haven? Why a Muslim woman cannot go to haven or mosque? There are so many questions like these which need answers, and you seem to know them. True? How would you like if we all become Muslims?

>>There must be a legitamite belief or grievance to provoke someone to take over a cockpit and crash a plane into a tower.<< Yes, the belief is Islam, and the world knows it. How much you know about Islam please? What good reasons you found why Islam invaded India and caused many Hindu genocide and destroyed temples? What does Koran and Hadith say to a Muslim how to treat a kafir? What a Muslims wants to get in haven? Why a Muslim woman cannot go to haven or mosque? There are so many questions like these which need answers, and you seem to know them. True? How would you like if we all become Muslims?

According to Hindu scripture, the soul is not matter, and is so small that it can go through glass just as light can go. So the container will not break. If you want to prove it, Take a bug and put it in thin glass jar and seal it. Let me know if it breaks when the bug dies. If any one says jar broke, then the same experiment is to be repeated in controlled environment in scientific manner where evidence is clearly witnessed.

Krishna defines asuras or demoniacs in gita daivAsura sampad vibhAg yoga (Divine and Demoniac Nature) chapter. AtatAyis are asuras also.

Dear Jaimal Singh, It seems you are saying is that Yogijii Maharaj appointed Dadubhai Patel as the guru of the sect after him, but Pramukh Swami took over without Yogiji Maharaj's permission. Who did not have diksha? It seems english is difficult for you. If so you may write in Hindi.

Jai!

Washington Post January 1, 2003 Pg. 1 U.S. Keeps Close Tabs On Muslim Cleric Officials Suspect Activist Has Close Ties With Iranian Regime By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer Seven weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Islamic cleric Mohammad Asi made a speech at the National Press Club, calling them "a grand strike against New York and Washington" launched by "Israeli Zionist Jews" who had warned the 5,000 Jews at the World Trade Center to skip work. He warned America that if it continued to offend Islam, "the day of reckoning is approaching." A small man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard who lives in Silver Spring, Asi, 51, may sound to some like an al Qaeda spokesman. He is actually a U.S. citizen, an Air Force veteran and a fixture in the local Islamic community. He also belongs to a little-known group of Muslim activists that many U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials believe is closely aligned with the government of Iran. For 14 years, until 1997, Asi ran the Islamic Education Center on Montrose Road in Potomac that serves 1,500 families. The center is funded by the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which law enforcement officials say is closely tied to the mullahs who dominate Iran. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials believe Alavi and its related institutions are a vehicle through which the Iranian regime keeps tabs on Iranians here, obtains data about U.S. technology, promotes Tehran's views on world affairs, provides gathering places for pro-Iran activists and channels money to U.S. academics to gain a friendly reading on Iran. Officials with the Potomac center and the foundation say they are philanthropic groups providing religious education and services. John Winter, a New York attorney for the foundation, said Alavi and the Potomac center "are not connected to terrorism or exporting high tech or spying on dissidents. The center has a school, a worship center and weekend programs. It's a community." Asi declines to respond in any way to questions about himself, except to say, "I am an American -- that should be enough." For the past two decades, current and former U.S. law enforcement authorities say, federal agencies have kept close tabs on Asi and this collection of groups through court-approved wiretaps, searches of offices, surveillance of Asi and others and the tracking of visiting Iranian officials. No charges have been filed against any current Alavi or Potomac center official, and much of the activity that concerns U.S. officials is not illegal. The officials emphasize that the great majority of people affiliated with the center in Potomac are law-abiding citizens. The scrutiny, however, is part of what the FBI considers an "intelligence" investigation, aimed largely at collecting information on groups and individuals it believes are hostile to the United States. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has considered Iran to be a leading state-sponsor of terrorism and has closely monitored its links to the United States. Such investigations have acquired greater significance since the Sept. 11 attacks. No current FBI official would comment on the classified matter. But Oliver "Buck" Revell, a former top FBI official, said the bureau has long believed that Alavi is "a front organization for the Iranian regime that is engaged in covert intelligence activity on the part of a hostile foreign government." David Cohen, the New York City Police Department's intelligence chief, said in a recent court document that the Alavi Foundation is "totally controlled by the government of Iran" and "funds a variety of anti-American causes," including the Potomac center and other mosques. These organizations, said Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the CIA, have affiliates that support Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, two groups the U.S. government has deemed terrorist. The Potomac center occupies a verdant six-acre campus in an affluent suburban neighborhood, but it was born during the tumultuous Iranian revolution in 1979. In the United States, activists supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini voiced anti-American rage, staging violent protests in Washington and elsewhere. A small group of believers including Asi instigated several showdowns at the Islamic Center mosque along Massachusetts Avenue, denouncing the Arab regimes that financed the place as apostates. Sermons were disrupted continually, and there were fistfights. Meanwhile, as the mullahs consolidated power in Iran, Khomeini's followers began seizing the shah's assets around the world. In Iran, a group called the Mostazafan Foundation took over the massive holdings of his Pahlavi Foundation, including ports and factories. In the United States, the newly formed Mostazafan Foundation of New York seized Pahlavi's sole asset here -- a 36-story office building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Evidence soon surfaced of the New York foundation's ties to Iran. A 1981 newsletter of Iran's Mostazafan said that "committed brothers and the Islamic Republic government" had reclaimed the Manhattan building through the Mostazafan Foundation of New York, which changed its name to Alavi in 1992. Mehdi Haeri, who was a ranking official of the new Iranian regime and is now a lawyer in Germany critical of Tehran, said the New York foundation was always controlled by Iran's Mostazafan. "There is no way they are independent of Iran," he said. In the early 1980s, according to tax records, the New York foundation started funding Islamic centers around the nation, a number of which espoused support for Khomeini or virulent opposition to U.S. policies. One was the Potomac center -- whose early history was intimately linked with the showdowns at the downtown mosque. Asi and an associate named Bahram Nahidian, known for his close personal ties to Khomeini, helped lead the activists' fight to control the Massachusetts Avenue mosque in 1980 and 1981. One of the co-leaders in that effort was Daoud Salahuddin, an American convert to Islam who was a close follower and bodyguard of Nahidian's. Salahuddin has admitted that he fatally shot a pro-Shah activist named Ali Tabatabai at his Bethesda home on July 22, 1980, and then fled the country. From his apartment in Iran, he has said he was acting on orders from the Iranian Embassy in Washington. In December 1981, the Tehran supporters packed a meeting to elect the Massachusetts Avenue mosque's prayer leader, and Asi won. He filled his sermons with vitriolic attacks on the Saudis, Israel and the United States, which he, like Khomeini, called "the great Satan." By March 1983, the mosque's Saudi-dominated board of directors hired security guards, ousted Asi and his flock, and changed the locks. The next month, the Potomac center formally opened. Among its leaders was Nahidian, a leader of the local partnership that, according to tax records, received $ 6 million for the venture from the Mostazafan Foundation of New York. Within a few months after his ouster from the downtown mosque, Asi took over at the Potomac center as imam and president, joining Nahidian in the leadership of the embattled congregation. Asi has told people that he was born in Michigan of a Syrian father and a Lebanese mother. As a U.S. Air Force pharmacy clerk in the 1970s, he tried to use his language skills to get into intelligence and was rejected, apparently because of his parents' foreign roots, said his friend Victor Marchetti. "He was angry about that," said Marchetti, a former CIA official who became a bitter agency critic. That rejection and the Iranian revolution in January 1979 -- while Asi was still in the Air Force Reserves -- helped radicalize him, say people who know him. Asi was a provocative figure inside the Potomac center, and FBI officials took note when he urged Muslims to take up arms against the forces of "kufr" or unbelief. "We should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world," Asi told a militantly anti-Israeli conference in 1990, just before the Persian Gulf War, as recorded on a tape unearthed by terrorism researcher Steven Emerson. "Strike against American interests," he said. A radical pro-Iran Web site, alwelayah.net, reprinted a 1994 public letter Asi wrote to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor, saying, "I . . . swear allegiance to you as leader of the Muslims." He blamed Jews for framing Jesus and controlling the world's economy. "Muslims will deal the deathblow to Yahud [Jews]," he wrote in an undated essay on a pro-Iran Web site called Muslimedia. In a 1996 magazine article, he wrote on the evil of his enemy: "A Jew is a Jew is a Jew." Federal officials said they kept tabs as Asi met many times with Iran's top hard-line officials in Tehran and elsewhere to plan opposition to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. About his activities, Asi will talk only about his ouster from the downtown mosque. He still seethes about it. "They violated my rights," he said in a recent interview. Salahuddeen Kareem, principal of the Islamic school that shares space with the Potomac center, said that although Asi is a blunt speaker, he is no threat to the United States. "He's an authentic and rare and unique patriot," Kareem said. In 1997, Asi stepped aside as imam at the Potomac center. The reasons are unclear, though some U.S. officials believe the Iranians wanted the center to present a less strident image. After two decades of classified investigation, U.S. officials say that, besides having close ties to the hard-line mullahs in Tehran, Alavi also has had close associations for years with the Mostazafan Foundation in Iran. One of the country's largest businesses, the quasi-public Mostazafan for much of its life has been run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian intelligence agency. The Revolutionary Guards is a sponsor of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed political group that the U.S. government blames for hundreds of American deaths in car bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon during the early 1980s. Former FBI official Revell said the U.S. government has concluded that Alavi officials have also worked closely with the Revolutionary Guards, which was itself involved in some of the kidnappings. Revell said U.S. officials have concluded that Alavi-funded centers such as the one in Potomac have helped Tehran keep tabs on Iranian dissidents and track U.S. research into sensitive high-tech subjects accessible through patent filings and engineering libraries. "It's obvious Alavi is controlled by the Iranian government," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism official. "That was the intelligence community's conclusion." Kenneth Timmerman, a terrorism expert who has advised law enforcement officials about Alavi and the Potomac center, said the Iranian government uses them to spread pro-Tehran propaganda to U.S. Muslims, especially African Americans. Alavi denies wrongdoing, or having ties to the Iranian regime. Foundation officials cite a federal judge's 1999 decision in a lawsuit filed by the parents of a Brandeis University junior killed in 1995 in a bus bombing by an Iranian-funded group in Israel. The family won $ 247.5 million in damages against Iran but was unable to collect from Alavi because a federal judge ruled that preliminary evidence suggested Iran did not exert "day-to-day control" over Alavi. "The IRS looks at us carefully," said Alavi attorney Winter. If officials think Tehran controls the foundation, he said, "why haven't they shut it down?" The Potomac center says it has an accepting and peaceful outlook. It has recently held interfaith dialogues and hosted neighbors, police and local politicians to discuss Islam and condemn the Sept. 11 attacks. There are signs that radical fervor lives on at the center. For years, Khomeini's picture has adorned the center's walls. Hormoz Hekmat, an anti-mullah activist, recalls attending an event there last year and seeing a large banner with a quote from Khomeini to the effect that "those who struggle against the U.S. will be rewarded by God." Asi himself is still a regular presence at the center, helping to commemorate the anniversaries of the Iranian revolution and of Khomeini's death. He has appeared many times with Ahmed Huber, a Swiss convert to Islam and Holocaust revisionist who rails against "Jewish bankers." The Potomac center for years has sold tapes of Huber's speeches. In 2001, U.S. officials froze Huber's assets and those of Bank al Taqwa, on whose board Huber served, declaring both the bank and Huber terrorism financiers. U.S. officials allege the bank has handled funds for Osama bin Laden. Huber has denied involvement in terrorism but told reporters that he has met al Qaeda operatives in Beirut. Asi seems to avoid talking about bin Laden. But he speaks about other topics to anyone who will listen. Almost every Friday for the past 19 years, through ice storms and scorching sun, he has led his followers in prayer on the Massachusetts Avenue sidewalk near the mosque. Rising from his woven prayer rug, he stands in his socks hollering his sermon into a bullhorn, denouncing "Jewish Zionist usurpers" and the Saudis. On one recent Friday, he shouted that a suicide bomber in Israel always "goes to Allah." Staff writers Scott Higham and Alan Lengel and researchers Margot Williams and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Washington Post January 1, 2003 Pg. 16 Indonesia Seizes Explosive Material PALU, Indonesia -- Indonesian police found a half-ton of ammonium nitrate, the same material used to make the explosives that tore apart two Bali nightclubs in October. It was the second such discovery in a week. The chemical, which is also used as fertilizer, was seized from a house in Palu, Sulawesi island, said police Lt. Col. Haka Astana. The owner of the house is being questioned, he added. On Christmas Day, police seized 550 pounds of the same fertilizer in a car in Palu. Authorities have arrested five people over the find but are still hunting for the alleged owner of the stash. Ammonium nitrate can be mixed with fuel oil to make a powerful explosive. It was the substance used in the blasts in Bali that killed 192 people, mostly Western tourists. Jemaah Islamiah, the al Qaeda-linked group blamed for the Bali blasts, is said to have stockpiled about four tons of the substance. Associated Press

Washington Times January 1, 2003 Pg. 8 News Analysis Bin Laden's Mandate Is The Legacy Of Jihad Strict Code of Islam Devolved From Ancient Religious Decrees By Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times In a truly free election in Saudi Arabia, with the royal family on the sidelines bereft of the divine right of kings, and Osama Bin Laden as a candidate for prime minister, the world's most wanted terrorist would win hands down. So spoke, albeit privately, one of the most important non-royals, who manages a big chunk of the royal family's financial portfolio. Bin Laden, a member of a powerful and rich-as-Croesus non-royal family, is seen by countless millions of fundamentalist Muslims as the successor of several famous Islamic theologians going back all the way to Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya. Born in A.D. 1269, Taymiyya wrote extensively on jihad (holy war) against transgressors of the word of Allah as conveyed by the Prophet. This contemporary of Dante elevated jihad to the same level as the "five pillars" of Islam — prayer, pilgrimage, alms, faith ("No God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet"), and Ramadan. Indeed, a survey of the various strains of radical Islam active in large swaths of the Muslim world presents much that is worrisome to a Western policy-maker. "The Age of Sacred Terror" is a remarkable new book by two of the Clinton White House's counterterrorist directors that delves into the roots of militant Islam and its jihad duties. Anyone who opposes jihad is an enemy of God. "By asserting that jihad against apostates within the realm of Islam is justified — by turning jihad inward and reforging it into a weapon for use against Muslims as well as infidels — [Taymiyya] planted a seed of revolutionary violence in the heart of Islamic thought," wrote co-authors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon. The two argue that it was precisely the weapon of jihad that heavily armed Muslim extremists turned to when they invaded and occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979. The House of Saud was momentarily paralyzed; they couldn't send security forces into the most sacred site in all of Islam with orders to shoot it out with the jihadists in the tunnels around the mosque. The royals turned to the French for help. The tunnels were flooded and high-voltage cables dropped into the water. Most of the jihadists drowned or were electrocuted. Any leader of a Muslim country who does not rule according to a strict interpretation of the Islamic legal code known as Shariah is fair game for jihadists, as Taymiyya ordained. It was Taymiyya's fatwa (religious decree) in 1303 against Mongol invaders that turned the tide against Mongols who had converted to Islam. If Taymiyya was Bin Laden's first role model, the second was Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, born in 1703 in Arabia, then a remote, neglected part of the Ottoman Empire. The works of Taymiyya became religious pillars of back-to-basics Wahhabism, as al-Wahhab's ideas came to be known. Its creed was that "innovation" was a grave sin against Islam. "Takfir" was proclaimed, which meant innovators were to be put to death. Al-Wahhab, allied with a local sheik, Mohammed ibn Saud, fought to restore a strict interpretation of the faith. By the time he died in 1792, Wahhabism had conquered most of central Arabia. The descendants of al-Wahhbab and Ibn Saud continued this close alliance of religious zeal and territorial conquest — and forced the rest of the Arabian peninsula to comply. Key modern-day literary firebrands on the side of Muslim revolutionary fervor included Abu al-Ala Maududi and Rashid Rida. They linked Islam with the rhetoric of communism and fascism, a linkage that helped fuel the success of Islamist extremists in the Oct. 10 elections in Pakistan. A similar fusion occurred in Iran in the late 1970s when the ayatollahs and the underground Tudeh (Communist) party merged their efforts to undermine and overthrow the U.S.-backed shah of Iran. On Jan. 26, 1952, the violent Muslim Brotherhood suddenly exploded on the Cairo scene by burning down some 300 buildings. King Farouk survived six more months until a military coup of "Free Officers," led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, abolished the monarchy and allowed the king to sail on his yacht into comfortable exile in Monte Carlo. The chief theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote nonstop during his desert imprisonment by Nasser. Hanged in 1965, his books are still best-sellers throughout the Middle East. His manifesto, "Signposts," merged all the essential elements of revolutionary Islamism. Qutb's views of America — derived from his stay in Greeley, Colo., while working on a master's in education — are widely shared today throughout radical Islam. Repelled by America's admiration for Israel, as well as the licentiousness and racism that he believed pervaded the country, he decried American culture as foul and empty. From Yasser Arafat's attempt to overthrow Jordanian King Abdullah I in September 1970 to the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, Sayyid Qutb's outpourings were cited by militants as the rationale to kill America's puppets. The other branch of militant Islam sprang from anti-colonial sentiment in British-ruled India in the mid-19th century. Known as Dar ul-Ulum (Realm of Learning), it took root at Deoband, in Uttar Pradesh. Deobandism, dedicated to a particular concept of Islam known as "salafi," and Wahhabism constitute the two main wings of Islamist fundamentalism that continue to vie for influence in present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Ninety-nine percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are moderate and see jihad as a self-cleansing process to get back on the path of spiritual excellence. Leaders such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf, King Abdullah II of Jordan, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, King Mohammed VI of Morocco all have told this reporter in the past two years that Islamist extremists are no more than 1 percent of their population. When Gen. Musharraf was reminded that 1 percent of Pakistan's population of 140 million is 1.4 million, he said, "You're right, but I'd never thought of it that way." One percent of 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide is 12 million fanatics who believe America is the Great Satan, fount of all evil, to be attacked and demolished. Islamist terrorist groups have plenty of places to hide — the tri-border area of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, where camps have been reported; war-torn Colombia; Somalia in Africa; Sumatra in Indonesia; Mindanao in the Philippines; even remote areas of the United States. Muslims are a majority in 63 countries. Of the 30 conflicts now under way in the world, 28 concern Muslim governments, communities, or both. Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, estimates that two-thirds of the world's political prisoners are held in Muslim countries, which also carry out 80 percent of all executions each year. Many of the imams in America's 2,000-plus principal mosques (for a population of about 2 million Muslims) are recently naturalized U.S. citizens who were sent over as missionaries from both Iran and Saudi Arabia. "We are spreading the good word of our faith in America," said the imam at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, Mich., who came over from Iran 10 years ago, "just as you send Christian missionaries to sub-Sahara Africa." He also chided his interlocutor for dismissing his contention that September 11 was a combined operation by the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Vatican sources concede Roman Catholic efforts have been steadily losing ground in Africa to "the Muslim penetration" for the past 30 years. In Pakistan, fundamentalist Muslim clerics have resisted any reform of the madrassas, the Koranic schools that have been used to inculcate anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli views. Among the teachings current in such schools: A great apocalyptic war is in the offing that will end in the Muslim conquest of Europe, and, in time, America as well. Some 750,000 young Pakistanis are presently in 11,000 madrassas where they are taught that jihad is the noblest of human endeavors. Gen. Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani intelligence chief with pronounced anti-American views, boasts that a greater Islamic caliphate is fast approaching, one that will combine the oil riches of Saudi Arabia with the nuclear weapons of Pakistan, "which could then deal with America on an equal footing." In Singapore, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, said that the "greatest threat facing civilization over the next 10 years was an Islamist bomb and, mark my words, it will travel." It is hard to escape the conclusion that a U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and replace him with a pro-American government will be seen throughout radical Islam, and large segments of moderate Islam as well, as yet another defeat that must be avenged. As the extremists read history, the defeat of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1683 triggered a reversal of Islam's fortunes that has continued ever since. The radical Islamic strains put to a severe test President Bush's oft-repeated contention that Islam is "a faith based upon peace and love and compassion" committed to "morality and learning and tolerance." Radical Islam is committed to jihad against the United States and Israel, or a war of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the impoverished Muslim world. The Wahhabis and Deobandis hate all things American, and condemn all religions outside their own view of Islam. Moderate Islam is yet to find a voice that will roll back the extremists, a sort of Islamic Martin Luther, or at least a Martin Luther King.

>>In which case, the trial of Godse should be declassified<< it makes no diffrence now when internet is almost everywhere, where it is available to read it. the congressees suppressed godse's information so much that until recenlty i did not know that godse was an intellectual and had very good reasons to shoot. he loved hinduism and he loved bharat desh. i see nothing wrong it it. jai sri krishna!

the scriputer talk of dvaita as well as advaita. there two groups always argues with each otre since the creation. it consider it family quarrel of the vedic people. my sadhan ais of dvaita, but i do not hate advaitis. i understnd that chaitanya has advised to not read advaiti literature. tht is good for a student who is new and can really get confused. or it coudl cause doubt in the mind ot the student about his gu's teaching, and dout cannot help one progress. for me it neer has caused me any problem. when an advaiti insists me his view, i tell him, "when we both reach god, then we will both know how god is. and the argeuemt will end. so, let us continue our sadhana till then. no need to argue now when we both are far away from god ralization." jai sri krishna!

the scriputer talk of dvaita as well as advaita. there two groups always argues with each otre since the creation. it consider it family quarrel of the vedic people. my sadhan ais of dvaita, but i do not hate advaitis. i understnd that chaitanya has advised to not read advaiti literature. tht is good for a student who is new and can really get confused. or it coudl cause doubt in the mind ot the student about his gu's teaching, and dout cannot help one progress. for me it neer has caused me any problem. when an advaiti insists me his view, i tell him, "when we both reach god, then we will both know how god is. and the argeuemt will end. so, let us continue our sadhana till then. no need to argue now when we both are far away from god ralization." jai sri krishna!

here is translation of two lines of a poem: oh luck is crazy, stays away if you invite or wait for it, comes running if you do not care for it. never trust it. jai sri krishna!

thanks Babhru das. it seems hawaians use a lot of vowels, sound melodious. jai sri krishna!

on my desk at job i have krishna pictures, gita, and the book - Jesus Lived In India, by Holger Kearsten no one can miss its view. but hardly any one askes any question about it. in many years one asked looking at the picture of krishna, His face with truban, flute and ornaments. he said, "who is this, your wife?" i said no, it is krishna, god. at home i have pictures of krishna and altar. my children's friends come, but supprisingly no one pays attention or asks any question. is it possible that they are taught in church to not discuss it in order to avoid getting positively interested? jai sri krishna!