Blast, Zizou and Alexander

I was talking to my close Indian friend who happens to be a RSS activist about the Mumbai Blasts that killed more than 200 people just a day before. He used to travel by that train line and most of his families live in Mumbai as well. He was saying ( to us) even the street kids in India know who (Pakistan) did it ! So everyone is asking for a war with Pakistan and he is ready to go for it. I told me that killing is not the way forward but he insisted that India should follow the foot steps of USA and invade Pakistan. According to him, like USA invaded Afganistan , India should invade Pakistan and that will teach them a lesson ! It's surprising that nobody has blamed Bangladesh yet but I assume the blame is gonna eventually come down to Bangladesh at some point. We just have to wait and see.

The world cup final turned out to be quite a show when Zizou, a non-practicing Muslim, head-butted the Italian player who was bullying him. Right after the incident the English newspapers employed few lip readers to find out what was the conversation all about that provoked Zizou to do such a thing. Here are some of the findings by the lip readers:

"Son of a terrorist whore,"

"I did it (the nipple-twisting) because I know that's how your mother likes it,"

"I wish an ugly death to you and your family,"

"your sister's a prostitute"

"you make love to your sister," etc.

Surprisingly the lip reading service wasn't that bad at all ! Yesterday Zidane, on french TV, did claim that the Italian insulted his mother and sister and he doesn't have any regret for what he did. So here we go - bravo to lip readers !

I was reading an article by Humayun Ahmed ( the famous Paedophile :-)) . In his China travelling diary, he preached to Bangladeshi audience that Alexander the great is a prophet of Islam. It irritates me to a great deal when somebody states a fact to a wider audience without any research at all ( much like Dan Brown; authors do have this preaching problem I guess !) . What I found out is the following from Wiki :

Dhul-Qarnayn is mentioned in the Qur'an. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn appears in sixteen verses of the Qur'an, specifically the 16 verses 18:83-98 (Al Kahf). There is extensive ongoing debate on who exactly was the historical character of Dhul-Qarnayn. Traditionally, many believe that Dhul Qarnayn is modelled on the Alexander The Great, through the intermediary of the Alexander Romance. However, in recent years, alternative theories have been proposed supporting other explanations. One of the most prominent of these is the theory that Dhul-Qarnayn was no other than Cyrus the Great of Persia. This theory has been endorsed by such scholars as Maududi, the Indian minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Allameh Tabatabaei (in Vol 26 of his al-Mizan), and Grand Ayatollah Makarim al-Shirazi (Bargozideh Tafseer-i Nemuneh, Vol 3, p69), among others.

Maududi writes in his Tafsir[1]

The identification of Dhul-Qarnain has been a controversial matter from the earliest times. Generally, commentators have been of the opinion that Dhul-Qarnayn is actually Alexander, but some characteristics of Dhul-Qarnain described in the Qur'an, it has been argued, are not applicable to the historical Alexander. The fact that the Alexander-as-Dhul-Qarnay theory actually refers to the semi-mythical Alexander described in the Alexander Romance makes the connection even more problematic for some Islamic scholars. Today some commentators are inclined to believe that Dhul-Qarnain was actually Cyrus The Great, an ancient king of Achaemenid Persia.