“Human rights” is a phrase that has been commonly used in a secular-liberal society. When the secularists call for a so-called human right to be respected, they usually believe that these “rights” can be embodied by our laws, governments, and agencies. Occasionally, people might say that the rights are “God-given”. The latter is itself a contradiction – for if rights are given by God, then they must exclude anything which goes against His commandments and revelations. However, the fact that the liberal-bourgeoisie want to protect the heretic and punish the believer, or protect the criminal and punish the victim, shows that their motivation for using “human rights” cannot have a religious or spiritual origin.
When the disbelievers refer to “human rights,” they therefore are manifesting their own ignorance and arrogance, for if they are saying that human rights are unconditional and given by a democratic government and the manufactured laws of the said government, then they are saying, indirectly that the concept of “human rights,” as well as the laws that a secular government creates, supersede the revealed religions. However, according to Islam, this amounts to kufr: to insolence, to overstepping the bounds which Allah (swt) has set for us. It is a denial of our Muslim nature and a denial of the truth of Tawheed, for the rule belongs to none but Allah (swt).
This is not to say that law and order do not exist, or that people should not be treated with kindness. But law and order is based on the divine Shari’ah in Islam. For Muslims, there is only either obedience, or disobedience. Either we accept the rule of Allah (swt), and live by Islam, or we are disobedient. When the leftists, or the secularists, or the liberals want to encourage “human rights,” this is often the direct opposite of the order that the All-Knowing has given. They want to promote the most reprehensible parts of society, and treat them as “brave people,” in order to corrupt the rest.
In Islam, it is said, “The seven heavens and the earth and all that is therein, glorify Allah” (17:44). All things, are the signs of Allah the creator, and the aim our life is to seek to understand these Signs, and understand Tawheed. Tawheed is knowing that we not only depend on Allah (swt) for everything, but also that it is for Allah (swt), our responsibilities. Tawheed means to acknowledge and accept our reliance upon our Creator.
Right now, the idea of “human rights” is being used to undermine Islamic communities, as well as other traditional societies around the world which contradict the materialistic and atheistic vision created by the West. The Imperialists are also using the idea of “human rights” as an excuse to continue their bullying of many smaller nations. The true problem, however, is not that Islam is not compatible with the “human rights” that the West promotes, such as sexual immorality, the right to take riba, or blasphemy, but that “human rights” are incompatible with Islam. This is a subtle but important distinction. The aim of those liberals who speak of human rights is only to extend their own demonic hegemony over the world. They did not, after all, consider the human rights of certain groups which they disliked, and in many cases expressed outright hatred of such groups.
The blind rush towards “human rights”, negates, and covers-up, our true nature. It takes us away from our true, natural, relationship with our Creator, and this kaffir concept of “rights” is nothing more than a false idol which should be smashed and destroyed. We should remember that the people who created democracy, communism and human rights, are the same people who want to dominate others through an artificial system of ethics. The remedy, of course, is a return to the Divine Revelation of Allah (swt) himself.
http://higher-criticism.com/2005/12/wang-ziping-muslim-patriot-in-china.html
One of the things the Hui embraced with passion was the Chinese martial arts tradition. The Hui were a hardy and courageous people, surviving long and perilous journeys from Persian and Middle Eastern lands. They quickly took a liking to ancient Chinese Wushu and worked long and hard at excelling in it. Eventually they developed their own unique styles of Wushu.
Before the invention of guns, Wushu was the chief means of combat and self-defense in China. Hui chiefs encouraged their people to study Wushu as a “holy habit” in order to foster discipline and bravery during their struggle for survival in their adopted land. Mosques became not only places of worship and religious education, but also a training ground for Grandmasters to teach eager students the basics of Wushu.
Even today, during the holy days of Lesser Bairam (festival of fast breaking), Korban (feast), and Mawlid an-Nabi (the Prophet’s Birthday), the Hui gather in mosques to hold Wushu contests and exhibitions. Cangzhou, in particular was nicknamed Wushu’s Nest, for the many Grandmasters who emanated from there.
In the past, many of the Hui joined the Chinese military and had illustrious careers in it, often rising to the rank of General. Also, because of this, the Hui were fanatically loyal to the emperors.
One of the things the Hui embraced with passion was the Chinese martial arts tradition. The Hui were a hardy and courageous people, surviving long and perilous journeys from Persian and Middle Eastern lands. They quickly took a liking to ancient Chinese Wushu and worked long and hard at excelling in it. Eventually they developed their own unique styles of Wushu.
Like many Hui, Ziping’s parents were poor. His father was a formidable pugilist, but was wise enough to know that Wushu would bring no fortune to the young boy. European guns were increasingly making the art obsolete, enticing even the Chinese army into procuring them and training in their use. Elder Wang thus dreamt of the day when his son would leave hardship and work in the Forbidden City as an official.
Ziping was adamant about learning Wushu, however. Wushu was the Hui identity. No Hui worth his salt would dare go through life without the rudiments of the “eighteen fist fighting exercise” and “eight diagram boxing” etched in his mind and body.
Besides Wushu, Hui were also steeped in Sufi teachings. They belonged almost overwhelmingly to the Naqshbandiyya school. Hui life was thus a mixture of pitiless labor, harsh training and deep spirituality. Their astonishing ability in Wushu is hardly an accident.
In the immediate post-war years of the 20th century, there was thought to be no greater threat to the world than that of the great Soviet menace and their most foreign of economic ideologies. Yet, for all the threatening military power of the Soviet military, it could not compare to the insidious and completely destructive social disease which was spread by the ultra-left. While indeed the ideas of Marxist-Leninism required revision to bring about a real practicality within itself, and create a creative application, it is widely acknowledged that a communist or Marxist system, in its pure economic sense, cannot take root without a violent revolution at a large human cost. This naturally means that in a country where stability can be enforced sufficiently through military means, the revolution can be eliminated altogether. Furthermore, the goals that are consistent with anti-Trotskyist communism, i.e. the concept of “revolution in one country,” can, in theory, exist to serve the general masses. In that capacity, it becomes a bulwark against social liberalism and bourgeoisie decadence.
There is, however, the matter of the ultra-left, and their maddening rush towards the aforesaid decadence. They are not concerned, ultimately, in a real “revolution of the masses,” but merely abuse a doctrine as a vehicle for social disruption using a smokescreen of vague terms. In recent times, those words have become ones such as “democracy,” “human rights,” and even “kindness,” but the truth cannot be obscured, and the terminology used is merely a pathetically worded euphemism meant to fool people and nations into giving up autonomy. The latter type of person, namely the ultra-leftist, is therefore more a more dangerous and parasitic entity. This can be seen in the fact that even during the most repressive years of the Soviet Union, there was still a vibrant, albeit controlled cultural life. Comparing 1960’s “AmeriKwa” to the 1960’s “Soviet Union” is a deep contrast which cannot be denied. Even the Soviet Union managed to avoid the decadence of the liberal West.
The first grand delusion of the cultural Marxists is that through social engineering, sophistry, and sometimes lies, they can bring about a sort of “silent revolution”. There was already no doubt that the subversive influence of cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School helped spark the counterculture social movements of the 1960s as part of a continuing plan of transferring Marxist subversion into cultural terms in the form of Freudo-Marxism. Today, cultural Marxism is a dominant strain among the bourgeoise Left. Essentially, it became Marxism which abandoned its economic philosophy and attempted to translate them into economic terms through the linguistic control of “political correctness”.
Conservative scholar Paul Gottfried in his book, The Strange Death of Marxism, states that Marxism survived and evolved since the fall of the Soviet Union in the form of cultural Marxism:
Neomarxists called themselves Marxists without accepting all of Marx’s historical and economic theories but while upholding socialism against capitalism, as a moral position …. Thereafter socialists would build their conceptual fabrics on Marx’s notion of “alienation,” extracted from his writings of the 1840s …. [they] could therefore dispense with a strictly materialist analysis and shift … focus toward religion, morality, and aesthetics.
The second grand delusion, is of course, that the movement from a traditional worldview to a liberal, relativist worldview is a necessary path to national progress, and that the cultral Marxists wish to effect such change with the interests of morality in mind. While moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type, the same moral principle cannot be a main principle in the development of the cultural marxist ideology. Hostility is too prominent within the leftist mind to allow morality to take root. Instead, what is present is the immoral aspect of secularism.
The author Francis Parker Yockey demonstrated in his book Imperium discussed the effects of cultural Marxism, using Spengler’s analysis as a jumping-point. Yockey explains how each civilization has its own unique soul and Destiny to be played out upon the world stage. Yockey argues that the coming man of the future or “man of the Twentieth century” must move beyond party-politics and begin the fight to save Western civilization, and further emphasizes that society must be free of Darwinism and Freudo-Marxism.
We can thank the good author, Mr. Yockey, in such an analysis. Today, the cultural Marxists are the very party-politicals who promote the said Freudo-Marxist antics and decadent bourgeoise ideals. To implement a mass line which counters the socially toxic effects of the cultural Freudo-Marxists means also mass line to apply a revolutionary spirit to all state activities, keeping in mind that the ultimate aim of culture is guidance of the organic spirit of the people.
The third and final grand delusion of the Cultural Marxists is thus that the people have any need for their sophistry and deception, and that their movement will be successful in tearing down the foundations of human stability or destroying the ramparts of faith.
First, let me say with firmness that I oppose violence against civilians in any form. There are always appropriate venues for action, but attacking one’s neighbors cannot solve the problem. The riots in Urumqi, where many lives of both Uyghurs and Han were lost, are a tradgedy in any sense. Furthermore, as a Chinese Muslim, I do condemn the abuses against my religion which the Uyghurs had suffered because of the Communist policies there. However, I also feel that this is a multi-dimensional problem. It would be foolish to say that China is attacking the religion of Islam itself, for only the reason of attacking Islam, as the Hui ethnicity, who are Chinese-speaking Muslims encounter little or no problem from the central government. In this posting, I want to discuss some points relating to the recent events in Xinjiang, even if I am a bit late in doing so.
Media Portrayal of the Urumqi Events
In much of the Western media, the Uyghurs were portrayed as victims. They were not portrayed so much as victims of bad Communist policies, of which all Chinese are a victim, but rather of racism and a particular military action against them. This is ironic, since most of those who perished were Han Chinese. During the riots, 137 Han Chinese, 46 Uyghur, and 1 Hui were killed. However, the race-obsessed media in the United States and in many other Western countries could not help but blame the Han Chinese and absolve the Uyghurs. It should be pointed out, however, this is not necessarily a sign of anti-Chinese bias. The American media has often taken the stance that “minorities can do no wrong,” and perhaps this type of reporting is merely an extension of that concept applied to China. One needs only to look at the American media’s knee-jerk defense of Sonia Sotomayor, or the strange case of the Jena Six in order to see that the media feeds off a frenzy of racial conflicts even in the United States. Obviously, the Western Media has no compunction about fueling the same racial tensions around the world to see their fairy-tale universe being played out.
This has not passed without some nagging feminist stating that heroic women have stood up to the oppressive male power structure. The “wise woman” has always been some sort of leftist icon, and this time was no exception. The London Evening Standard says that “women fought with riot police”. The impression one gets from watching the Western media is that the Uyghurs are poor and repressed, and therefore “innocent” by default, and therefore the majority Han are the oppressors. While I do agree that there is frustration against the Chinese government among Uyghurs, murder is still murder. One should cast aside the political correctness that is being enforced in the media. After all, think for a moment, what the NPR, the Huffington Post, and the other liberal, Judeobolshevist-controlled media in the United States would say had 137 Israelis been killed by Palestinians. I am fairly sure that the Uyghurs do not endure bombings on their towns by American-build fighter jets, nor those said towns being bulldozed for Jewish-only settlements. Certainly, the Palestinians, co-religionists with the Uyghurs, who suffer a fate much worse, would be labeled “terrorists”.
Political Implications of the Urumqi Events
It is important to think of what the Urumqi riots mean for the world. Most notably is a concern that this can upset China’s relations with the Muslim world. I think that in part, the West is exploiting this opportunity to do just that. The Trotskyists on Capitol Hill still have a dream of some sort of “Democratic Internationale,” and therefore need a convenient way to weaken China while gaining it as an ally. On the one hand, they have tried to cast blame upon China for their heavy handed approach, and on the other attempted to link Al-Qaeda to the event. China then reaches an impasse: if they act, even with a legitimate cause to counter a terrorist threat, they are accused of genocide and repression and incur wrath from Muslims. If they fail to act, they can become a target for terrorism themselves.
Today, China has become a rival in the race for resources. In particular, China sees it useful to attempt to seek cooperation with the Turkic-Islamic nations in Central Asia to build a corridor of influence to the oil-rich Middle East. Naturally, the Urumqi Riot destabilizes those links. Also, at a time when we hear about the “China threat” and “Islamofascism” almost on a daily basis, the one thing that the Euro-Atlantic Axis does not want is for a strong Eurasian alliance between China, Russia and the Islamic world. There is no doubt that even if the original incident had legitimate roots, it has been exacerbated by outside forces in an attempt for a certain elite to benefit from a global conflict.
The very nature of the protests seems to suggest a degree of foreign meddling designed to conveniently produce good propaganda for the liberal-controlled media in the United States. In the midst of mass confusion, there was an orderly protest of a few hundred women, as reported by several media agencies. Putting together such an organized protest requires effort, good communication, and money, and having a march composed exclusively of women, especially in an Islamic society is an extremely sophisticated, media-savvy and effective form of protest. It made all the headlines. In a place like Xinjiang, where the people especially the Uighurs are poor, uneducated, probably not too media-savvy and who definitely don’t have a long tradition of public protest, this kind of protest seems unlikely without some kind of effective leadership.
Closing Remarks (for now)
I know I will probably tread dangerous ground in writing this, and I have tried to remain fair and balanced throughout my commentary. When writing about sensitive issues, I am invariably confronted with the accusation that since I am not politically correct, I must be an agent of the Chinese Communist Party. However, I am Taiwanese and owe no loyalty to the Communist Party. I merely refuse to be constrained by the beloved speech codes of Western liberals.
What I have written here is only a fraction of the commentary of a many-faceted situation which has nuances of history, politics, and international relations. I hoped that I had touched on some less-discussed facets, as I had been rather late in making my commentary on this issue, expecting that bloggers on all sides of the issue had already commented on it. I do encourage the humble reader to read the views of other authors and bloggers, and make their own decisions, and provide links underneath this post. In any case, I do hope for peace in Urumqi and in Xinjiang. I hope that all Muslims in China can practice their religion freely, and that the families of my Uyghur acquaintances, with whom I have built up warm friendships will be safe.
Links:
- On the Recent Ethnic Problems in Xinjiang by “Friends of China”
- The “Global Times” has several articles on Xinjiang:
- Blogger “shuzheng” has several postings on the incident
Anti-war conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist and maverick politician Patrick Buchanan had some words to say about Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama. Given that the confirmation hearing for Sotomayor has begun, it is worth looking at a view that opposes the common media’s unreserved, slavish heaping of praise on this woman. Buchanan, writing for WorldNet Daily, had this to say Source: (Miss Affirmative Action 2009):
Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades.The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even if the party loses the battle and Sotomayor sits on the court, it can win the war, as Ronald Reagan won the Panama Canal debate, even as Senate Republicans committed collective suicide by voting to give away the canal.What are the grounds for rejecting Sonia Sotomayor?No one has brought forth the slightest evidence she has the intellectual candlepower to sit on the Roberts court. By her own admission, Sotomayor is an “affirmative action baby.”Though the Obama media have been ballyhooing her brilliance – No. 1 in high school, No. 1 at Princeton, editor of Yale Law Review – her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and study basic grammar books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of “Chicken Little” and “The Troll Under the Bridge”?
In video clips dating back 25 years, and now provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor, according to the Times, even calls herself an “affirmative action product.”
“The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an ‘affirmative action baby,’ whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Hispanic and had grown up in poor circumstance.”
“If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions,” says Sotomayor, “it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted. … My test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates.”
Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review – all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.
This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.
One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated “with the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
As the Times reports, on the tapes, Sotomayor rejects “the proposition that minorities must become advocates of ’selection by merit alone.’ She said diversity improved the legal system.”
“‘Since I have difficultly defining merit and what merit alone means, and … whether it’s judicial or otherwise, I accept that different experiences, in and of itself, bring merit to the system,’ she said, adding, ‘I think it brings to the system more of a sense of fairness when these litigants see people like myself on the bench.’”
What does the latest Times revelation tell us?
That were it not for Ivy League dishonesty, Sotomayor would not have gotten into Princeton, would never have been ranked first in her class, would not have gotten into Yale Law, nor been named editor of Yale Law Review, and thus would not be a U.S. appellate court judge today or a nominee to the Supreme Court.
Indeed, the White House itself leaked that the final four court candidates were all women and Sotomayor was picked because she was a Latina. One wonders how many superior students and judges have been passed over to advance Sonia Sotomayor’s career?
From college days to court days, that career reflects, in word and deed, a determination to use any power she achieves to create a society where the demands of diversity triumph over the ideal of equal justice under law. For Sotomayor, the advancement of people of color over white males is justice.
Republican senators should use this Sotomayor nomination to put affirmative action in the dock for what it is – race-based bigotry against white males so that persons of color can receive the rewards of society that they could not win in free and fair competition.
Lay out the Sotomayor record – SAT scores, LSAT scores, bar exam score, law review articles and her opinions – so that we can see up close what those who eviscerated Robert Bork regard as academic and judicial excellence.
No need for name-calling. Just lay out the lady’s opinions and record, so that, if she is elevated, Americans can say: Barack Obama voted against Chief Justice Roberts because Roberts could not measure up to Sonia Sotomayor, his ideal of what a justice ought to be.
With all this said, the Republican Party and all of Sotomayor’s critics must judge her on her adherence to the Constitution and her understanding of American law in attempting to defeat the nomination. Has Sotomayor judged righteously and fairly, or was she guided by her personal emotions? If not, then her detractors should have enough valid arguments to make their statement very clearly. Sotomayor herself should remember that if her nomination succeeds, her oath to administer justice without regard to skin color, gender, or ethicity is taken in the name of God: “I, do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me…under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.” She needs to be aware that as a Catholic, making a false oath would be a grave sin, which profanes the name of God.
hese are a series of short essays from the New York Times regarding traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and the evolution of the Chinese written language in general.
The Utopian Ideal in Writing
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is an associate professor of Chinese literary and cultural studies at Harvard University.
The utopian impulses behind standardization and simplification of a living language are always understandable. Increased literacy, administrative efficiency, and ease of communication are laudable goals. But those impulses can also strip a language of its wit, whimsy, and play, not to mention its capacity to accommodate new concepts and usages.
Traditional characters and simplified characters never were two separate and autonomous language systems — they have always existed on a continuum. Many simplified characters are adaptations from common usage in Chinese cursive script; on the other hand, the inability to read traditional characters is to close oneself off to much of the Chinese cultural legacy — its history and arts — before the 1950s.
Since I grew up in Taiwan, where reading and writing in traditional characters is the norm, simplified characters were a novelty and a bit of a challenge, and perhaps, something to be sniffed at. But when my first job after college led me to Beijing to work as a literary translator, I spent the first week furtively consulting a little manual of “Simplified/Traditional Character Conversion” before I became fully comfortable with the new system, including learning to write my name in a way that was comprehensible to desk clerks. The experience taught me the follies of being a cultural purist.
Given the increasing flow of published and online materials among the mainland China, Taiwan, and the overseas Chinese diasporas, a literate reader must have the ability to code-switch. Thus, the answer is not either/or, but — annoyingly for policy makers — both.
Elitism vs. Populism
Eugene Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller professor of Asian art at Harvard University.
Simplifying traditional Chinese characters was a linguistic democratization and one of China’s most successful progressive programs in the 1950s. The majority of the population was lifted out of illiteracy.
Literacy had long remained a privilege and a source of power wielded by the elitist few. With the characters made easier to learn, the key to knowledge embedded in written texts was handed to a wide population.
A clash between traditional and simplified characters comes down to elitism vs. populism. A recent poll conducted by Sohu.com on whether to reinstate the traditional characters shows that more netizens oppose it. Behind the elitism/populism divide is the opposition between an archaistic nostalgia toward the illusory “purer” traditional Chinese literacy and a pragmatic and forward-looking modern drive. (Both Singapore and Malaysia, with sizable Chinese populations, also adopted simplified characters decades ago.)
Advocates for reinstating traditional characters exaggerate the break of the simplified system from the traditional orthography. Simplified characters still retain the basic structure of traditional ideographs. The structural continuity makes the switch between them easy and smooth, a skill any educated person can quickly acquire. Many of the simplified characters had been in existence for more than a millennium. Manuscripts unearthed from ancient tombs and medieval caves suggest that some simplified characters now used were already in currency then. The reform in the 1950s only officially legitimated these underground “outlaw” vernacular characters.
Aesthetic appeal is another argument made for reinstating traditional characters. Calligraphy, the quintessential aesthetic form of Chinese writing, in fact favors simplification. The running- and cursive-hand in Chinese calligraphy has always been the most radical form of simplifying characters. The six-stroke character xing (running), for instance, was reduced to a mere two vertical strokes in medieval calligraphic practice.
It’s true that computer keyboarding has now made the dreaded writing of multi-stroke-characters mostly moot. But why require schoolchildren to spend time and cognitive energy learning overly complicated ideographs in this age of information explosion, so vastly different from traditional society? Why not let them acquire the simplified form first, and if they desire, move on to master traditional characters? The first step is for efficiency; the second is for cultural refinement. That is why every society has the division of labor between bankers and poets.
The Chinese Canon, Diminished
Hsuan Meng writes a column for World Journal Weekly.
Language is about cultural identity. This is especially true in the case of the written Chinese language, which has evolved for at least three millenniums and is now used by one and a half billion people worldwide. Given the language’s long history, future Chinese readers and writers may have to live with the consequences of current decisions long after today’s powers and regimes have ceased to exist.
The advantage of traditional characters is that they offer a stronger and richer connection with the history of the Chinese language. The simplified writing system has reduced the variety and changed the nature of many character shapes, making it more difficult for people to access classical texts in their full richness.
This is more than an academic concern. Just as Shakespeare’s plays and the language he used serve as a foundation for the English language, so are the canonical writings of Confucius, Lao Tzu and countless others who had exploited the full range and expression of the traditional characters.
Proponents of simplified characters say that simplified characters are easier to learn. But I have found no rigorous study that fully proves this. Moreover, some studies have shown that the simplification process, by warping the shapes of characters, can cause confusion in the meaning of characters.
In Taiwan and Hong Kong, schoolchildren have no trouble learning traditional characters, and those regions demonstrate some of the highest literacy rates in the world. Meanwhile, in recent decades, the People’s Republic has implemented policies that implicitly acknowledge the practical, cultural and aesthetic values of traditional Chinese: some traditional characters have been restored to use, and the government permits traditional characters in the practice of calligraphy.
The push to simplify Chinese reflects contemporary political agendas more than a desire for a good solution. We should find ways to promote coexistence of both systems of writing.
This essay was translated from the Chinese by Victoria Meng.
How a Computer Might Respond
Norman Matloff is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, and is the author of KuaiXue, a software tool for learning Chinese.
The original rationale for simplification was to accelerate the learning process. But is this necessary today, given China’s much improved economic and social conditions? There may be no easy answer.
What’s certain is that converting from the simplified characters, or jiantizi, to the traditional characters, fantizi, would be a huge task, affecting everything from school textbooks to government documents to online systems. Automation of that process would present serious technical challenges.
The trouble stems from fundamental differences in the two character sets. The simplification process of the 1950s sometimes resulted in two different traditional characters becoming identical in simplified form. For instance, the traditional characters 發 (”develop”) and 髮 (”hair”) are both written as the simplified character, 发. When the software sees the latter, it must guess which of 發 and 髮 is intended. Typically the guess is made by analyzing context. Sometimes, the software can produce the occasional howler. A passage describing “loss of face” might be translated by the computer as loss of 麵 (”noodles”) rather than loss of 面 (”face”)!
So while most of the process could be automated, especially with more fine tuning in the software, much work would need to be done by hand as well.
Lately, the media has been in a furor over the results of an election in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Noticable protests have been reported throughout the country in response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent victory. Media speculation has stated that Ahmadinejad “stole” the election from his competitor Mir-Hossein Mousavi. They have been vicious in attacking Mr. Ahmadinejad’s character, and taken every opportunity to remind an all-too-believing public that he “doubts the Holocaust” and opposes Zionism.
I wonder, however, how certain people would have reacted if the current American atheist god-king, Barack Hussein Obama, had lost the election. Would race-riots, spurred on by a pseudo-Marxist intelligentsia have broken out in African-American neighborhoods? Would there have been demonstrations by liberals to demand the resignation of Senator John McCain?
CNN reported that “three million” people took to the streets of Tehran to protest the outcome of the election. Yet Tehran has only a population of 7,088,287 people according to an Iranian census. The protests in photos do occasionally show a large number of people, but one would be hard-pressed to believe that half of Tehran had marched in the streets. The Washington Times reported that 250 people died (while the official estimate from the Iranian government is 20 casualties). But, even if 250 people have been killed in this massive stampede, then it shows a remarkable level of restraint on the part of the Iranian authorities.
One thing we should note is that Ahmadinejad was favored in many polls before the election. According to a survey conducted by an organization called “Terror Free Tomorrow,” Ahmadinejad was expected to have at least 34 percent of the Iranian popular vote, while Mir-Hussein Moussavi “was the choice of 14 percent, [and] 27 percent stating they were still unsure”. In a two-candidate vote, unsure voters tend to vote for the incumbent. This is a pattern which occurs worldwide. If all the votes of those undecided went to Moussavi, then it is possible that he could have won. But, even if 85% of the undecided voters voted for Mousavi, then Ahmadinejad could have still won.
The survey also stated that “seven in ten Iranians think the elections will be free and fair, while only one in ten thinks they will not be free and fair”. Some people, though, are skeptical. They will claim that Iranians fear speaking out because of backlash. How can it be then, that these fearful Iranians, within hours of the election, went from a state of timidness to a state of bravery? Could it be that the Iranians had not truly been fearful of speaking out?
There is also the strange case of Iranians using the popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to speak out. Thousands of tweets and retweets, posted by users with catchy user names such as “Change_for_Iran” (Change? sound familiar?) denounced the election and called for demonstrations. Another blogger noted a few peculiarities with this.
- They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
- Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
- “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
- With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
- Half of them had the exact same profile photo.
- Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER
Moreover, on facebook.com, people who are engaged in opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran have been telling other users in the same cause to change their network to Iran in order to “confuse the authorities and protect innocent people”. Yet this is not the true intention – could it be that they want to make it appear as if more people are against Iran than there are in reality? How can it be that despite the fact that Twitter and Facebook are blocked in Iran, that the number of “internet warriors” keeps getting bigger and bigger? Why is it that the biggest audience for the tweets and facebook messages seems to be those in the English speaking world? The same blogger mentioned previously decided to do a google search for some of the most persistent Twitter bloggers @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a Zionist newspaper, which ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers”.
We do not need to ask questions (for it is already quite obvious) that Israel wishes all sorts of harm on the Muslim world, especially Iran. The Judeobolshevists in Israel and on Capitol Hill would like nothing more than to see secular-socialist terrorists the Islamic Republic from its foundations and declare a hedonistic, liberal society in which religion is trampled and atheism is the key doctrine of the state.
We must, at this time, stand firmly in support of the Islamic Republic and its leaders, and also wish for an end to violence in Iran, and oppose the far-left secular terrorists who wish to oppose the safety of their fellow people.
In Shari’ah, there are four kinds of disbelief (kufr) and seven kinds of disbelievers (kaafir).
The types of kufr are as follows:
- kufr jahl – The kufr which originates from ignorance. In this case, the denier denies the validity of Islam because he either does not posess enough knowledge to make a decision on it, or that he believes the claim of Islam is false.
- kufr shak -This means kufr occasioned by doubt. The denier knows about Islam, but either denies the validity of the message or its source.
- kufr ta’weel – This means kufr by way of interpretation. Here, kufr is not committed by rejecting the message of Muhammad (s.a.w.) outright, but rather by taking it out of context.
- kufr juhood – This is deliberate kufr, or the obstinate and rebellious denial of Islaam in spite of realizing its truth. This is the denial of many secularists, atheists, and liberals in the West, and also the same kufr of Satan.
Of the four types of kufr, the last, kufr ta’weel is the most common nowadays among those who were born Muslim. Liberal or “figurative” interpretations are employed by those wishing to do bidah and distort the true beliefs and teachings of Islam. By such baatil ta’weel (baseless and corrupt interpretation), Qur’aanic verses and Ahaadith are given meanings which conflict with their true and original meanings explained by the Prophet (s.a.w.) The worst threat to Islam alone is kufr juhood.
The seven kinds of disbeliever (kaafir) are:
- munaafiq (the hypocrite): A person who claims that he is a Muslim, but knows that he is not – essentially those who may be “Muslim in Name Only”. Alternative, it is one who outwardly pretends to be a Muslim, while inwardly concealing his disbelief. The Qur’an states, “The hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of the Fire: no helper wilt thou find for them.” – (An-Nisa 145).
- murtad (the apostate): A person who renounces Islaam in its entirety. The Qur’an says: “And if any of you Turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein” (Al-Baqara 217). This includes the current President of the United States, Barack Obama. By many accounts, he does not even qualify as a Christian.
- mushrik (the polytheist): A person who associates partners with Allah and commits shirk, or one who believes in more than one Divine Being.
- dahriyyah: A person who denies the Last Judgement and who denies that Allah created the universe
- muattil: (the atheist): A person who denies the existence of a creator.
- zindeeq: a person who recognizes the Qur’an as being legitimate, but adheres to beliefs which are unanimously branded as kufr in the Shari’ah. These are, for example, the members of the heretical pseudo-Islamic sects such as the Qaidanis and the Nation of Islam. It also includes all those individuals who are attempting to “change” Islam for the sake of changing it. Bukhari narrates that the Prophet said, ” Whoever innovates or accommodates an innovator then upon him is the curse of Allaah, His Angels and the whole of mankind.”
- kitaabi – A person who follows a previously revealed, divine religion.
We live at a time at which the younger generation of intellectuals must bear upon themselves the weight of a great cultural struggle. At a time when the radical left are not only attempting to promote all sorts of moral degeneracy, but also resorting to unprecedented vicious schemes against traditional ways of life, many misleading statements are being made. The enemies of traditional viewpoints are in effect resorting to slander and abuse, calling them “totalitarian”, “barracks-like” and “backwards”, and by doing so are distorting the facts, pretending that such is its nature, and that the need to abolish it in its entirety is a by-product of its “archaic and oppressive” content, and that its loss in its function is due to this nature.
Unlike other creatures, Man is not merely a biological animal, but one which also encompasses spiritual, social, and economic spheres. In the degenerate age, the corrupt “rulers” have emphasized only the biological and economic portions of Man’s innate nature, but have ignored the spiritual and social spheres. In so doing, they have created a shameful, casteless society in which relationships between people are meaningless, leading to much social unrest and strife. By ignoring the spiritual sphere and supplanting it with the economic, they have made life unfufilling and degenerate.
It is a mistake to associate Traditionalism with backwardness or Liberalism with freedom. Moreover, it is also a mistake to overestimate the value of the so-called “freedom in a democratic society”. It must be realized, first, that the claim that proponents of morality and traditionalism are “oppressors” first coincided with the rise of Protestantism, and took full force during the Englightenment. It was not, however, until fairly recently that these anti-morality and counter-cultural struggles began to acquire their full speed in a political scope. In the modern era, the liberal’s refusal to accept a hierarchy of culture as well as a fixed, natural system of morality has lead to outright slanderous attacks of any non-liberal or traditional culture practice to be labeled as “absolutist”. In today’s world, the leftists have even postulated, and even declared that any society that runs on any form of morality must be completely inhumane, devoid of any freedom or democracy. Furthermore, by a corrupt use of neo-Marxist ideology, the liberal attempts to demoralize Tradition for the sake of the “survival” of liberalism. Therefore, the claims of traditionalism being “totalitarian”, “barracks-like” and “absolutist” are only a repetition of the false liberal propaganda that merely uses new words.
The original idea on which the supposed “social democracy” was founded once advocated freedom, equality and human rights, in opposition to feudal despotism and corruption. One can agree that, the modern age has some conveniences for man, but once again turning to a closer examination, we realize that, in the hands of a few radicals, these freedoms began to be abused and transformed to allow the anti-traditionalists to resort to attacks against Traditionalism. In recent years, the left has made every possible effort to embellish their impure ideologies, calling it “liberal democracy”; however, they could not conceal its falsity, nor were they able to remove from the minds of the popular masses their aspiration and longing for a moral order which would provide them with genuine freedom. To counter this problem, they resorted to vicious propaganda, which frantically resorted to call traditionalism “archaic”, and by using the precept of “separation of church and state”. Through this, the early European liberals lead Traditionalism to be abolished in public, while at the same time, allowing corruption, paganism, and vile superstitions to flourish. The rapid propagation of such corruption was also a result of the collusion by the left, and the cultural infiltration of the so-called ‘revolutionary’ schemes of the radicalized Left during the 1960’s.
Furthermore, in order to stifle the roles of Traditionalism, liberals have for a long time been perpetrating every manner of destructive action: aggression and pressure toward Traditionalists to back down from our principles, and appeasement of our oppressors. As it stands today, the ideological confusion on what defines the corpus of proper thought across many schools and denominations is due to the fact that renegades have appeared in the upper strata of all areas of academics. In the historical situation in which traditional values such as morality had become a powerful force in the guidance of the affairs of state, liberals attached greater importance to the strategy of infiltrating it and undermining it from within and made many attempts to achieve this aim. In accordance with this strategy, the leftists made increasingly malevolent attempts to force acceptance of leftist propaganda to an unprecedented level, the chief aim being to justify the abolition of morality and culture on a large scale.
“Totalitarianism,” albeit under the guise of “justice for all,” served as the political idea of liberalism. Because liberals wish to create the world in the image of man – essentially an impure and decadent creation that mocks God – they espouse secularism. They wish to replace religion with the dogma of liberalism, since the modern liberal does not seek to tolerate people different than him, but rather to invade every private corner and force every thought into a “politically correct” mold. Their fervor and fanaticism in this comes close to being quasi-religious, whereunto everyone who disagrees with them is called a “fascist” (their word for “heretic”). The deeper concern in the course of abolishing any concept of God was not for the benefit of the masses (as they claim), to claim power and abolish morals. The fact that this dishonest system is by nature a concept that naturally arises from liberalism points to the fact that under that system, the interests of the people are sacrificed for the rapacious interests of the ruling class under the pretence that the individual should be subordinated to the whole in the name of progress. However, what was meant by the whole in liberal totalitarianism was not the masses, but a tiny handful of Party members. Liberalism is ultimately a preposterous lie, which identifies illegal actions that are as inimical to so-called democracy as the implementation of social progressivism.
Unless action is taken quickly in this respect, such abuses will only continue to be fostered and grow. If this is permitted to happen, liberals will alienate the popular masses from living moral lives, and the enemies of Traditionalism will exploit this. The situation of atheist countries clearly shows this: In every country, the people demanded freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Even so, acts of betrayal against the people were committed in order to instigate people to oppose morality by misleading them with the preposterous slander that religion was “poison”. What the people of those countries got as a result of the collapse of morality was not freedom, but oppression and social inequality. In those countries in which Traditionalism was abolished, abuse of power did not disappear, but was socially legitimized and institutionalized.
Clearly, slander against traditional culture and values are absurd. But the reason why it was so damaging and had caused so much doubt and confusion among the people was because they had not been properly equipped to deal with the lies of the left. Furthermore, it was not easy to identify the malicious nature of the slander from the outset, because it was conducted craftily in the guise of social progressivism. But if the People had been instructed in developing and perfecting the Five Purities with the correct intentions, they would have been equipped proper yardstick for measuring the events which were happening, and they would have not been easily shaken by such sophistry. Therefore, if our cause is to be defended and competed, the teaching of we must begin with a strong base of Traditional culture. This itself must be developed and perfected so that we may be equipped with it, in hopes that we may proceed with an unshakable conviction towards our goals. By so doing, we will be making efforts to rejoin a moral force with the law can we conduct the cultural struggle which is instrumental in governing the People.
In conclusion, we must derive a proper lesson from the setback faced by in recent times and reject all the liberal propaganda on all possible levels. We must advance more vigorously toward the bright future of humanity, displaying such intelligence and courage as to turn misfortune into a blessing.
