God's Grace for Najma Ghouse

God has been good to us.
After 9 months of good medical care and God's grace, Najma, my wife is now completely under God's care and surviving with Allah’s grace, your wishes and prayers.

In the foot steps of Prophet Muhammad, as a Muslim, I draw inspiration from all faiths and share this beautiful precise expressive phrase from Jainism “ Michami Dukadam”, the essence of which is, on this day, let’s forgive and ask for forgiveness and start the next breath of life with a clean slate, free from guilt, free from anxiety, free from hate, malice, anger and all those enslaving emotions. ..... The Qur'aan says that God’s favorite person is the one, who forgives and seeks forgiveness. It is also an idea central to the teachings of Jesus Christ. I want to thank every one who has participated and will participate in this heart and mind purifying process with Najma and I..

Please say "Michami Dukadam", it will complete the transaction.

Click the link to continue: http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2008/05/gods-grace-for-najma-ghouse.html

Reflections on Holocaust

Reflections on Holocaust
Mike Ghouse, January 15, 2008

www.FoundationforPluralism.com
http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Reflections-on-Holocaust.asp

The United Nations has designated January 27th as the Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day, in behalf of the Foundation for Pluralism and the World Muslim Congress, I request us to reflect upon the human sufferings inflicted by humans through out the world.

We may start out by scribbling a title for each one of the small and large injustice we have witnessed or learned through news. What did we do with that information and how did we feel about ourselves? The conflicts emanating from injustices are rife in Congo, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Pakistan and other places. Please take a moment to reflect upon the viciousness of the humans, the vulgarity of the few that has engulfed the innocent bystanders. We have to work towards the idea of “saving a life is like saving the whole humanity,” says God in Torah and Qur’aan. You and I exist because someone believed in it before us.

Six Million Jews were brutally murdered simply because of their faith. Imagine if we were in that situation, ruthlessly packed in a rail car along with 100 other humans to be thrown in gas chambers. The helplessness and the humiliation should have been palpable, but the world stood by silently finding bliss in self designed ignorance. If it happens to us we feel like tearing the world apart.

The world reacted belatedly, thank God; the evil plan of the Nazis did not materialize. We said, never again and we keep falling short on our own promise. It is time to reflect if our hearts can feel the pain and if our minds can do something about it. We should visit the holocaust museum in our area; it will upload humanity into us, it is good to be a human again and again.

Our hearts and minds are endowed with a sense of justice, and whenever we see that balance disturbed, we react to it with anger, helplessness and distress. Religion and common sense have taught us to regain that balance by taking an action, least of which is to speak up. Our minds work mysteriously, the act of seeking balance and justice relieves us from the anguish and gives us a sense purpose in life that we stand for something.

If my actions and words aggravate a conflict, then I have become a contributor toward chaos, on the other hand if my words and actions mitigate the conflict, I become a peace maker. Peace has got to be unconditional without any score keeping, “do your duty without the greed of results”, says the Bhagvad Gita.

No one is an island; we have to develop an open mind and an open heart towards each other in the process of healing and repairing the world. We should short change our humanness by thinking that we were not responsible for it.

We should honor our divine instructions to demur and honor the suffering of others. It will be a day for all of us to reflect upon and promise ourselves "never again" and hope each one of us makes a commitment to oneself to speak out against any injustice.

If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. The healing and recovery for Humanity can only occur when we each examine our own hearts, our own cultures and our own faith traditions to discern where seeds of prejudice, cruelty and even genocide remain hidden.

A Good deed is creating peace, security and balance for all creation. The wisdom of Bible is crystal clear “do unto others as you would want others to do to you”. Indeed, that is essence of all religions.

This is an invitation to people of all backgrounds to reflect upon the tragedies humans have endured, and bring about a change, however little we can. The least we can do is to speak up whenever we see injustice or words and actions that promote chaos.

In 2006, the United Nations proclaimed January 27th as a Holocaust remembrance day to commemorate the worst atrocity the world had ever witnessed. In support of that, the Foundation for Pluralism and the World Muslim Congress organized an event on Thursday, January 26, 2006 to accommodate the Jewish Sabbath as January 27 fell on a Friday in 2006. For more information please visit:

http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Images_HolocaustDay/HMD2006_ProgramReport.asp

I request you to pray and mourn for the massacres and deaths of all human beings. I beg you to forgive me if I have missed a tragedy that you are familiar with. I admire you if you could send me a 100 word description or a link from a news paper to be included in the comments.

If you felt sorrow for some and not for the others, please check out your peace meter for your bias and prejudices against groups, nations, ethnicities, religions, cultures or races. Higher the prejudice lesser the peace and vice versa.

You can increase your peace and happiness by repenting in your solitude for your biases and see the meter start rising, and when you actually do not feel any bias toward any human, see the mercury miracles. Finally if you can volunteer one hour a week for people you don't know or you did not like in the past, you can be the happiest person on the earth. God guarantees that and I will underwrite it. Ha! Try it, it is effortless and won't cost you a dime but gain you happiness.

May God help us become prejudice free,

May God give us the guts to speak up when we see wrongs,

May God remove arrogance from us and

May God bless us with the humanness to feel the pain and sorrow of others.

Please pray (wish it, if you are an atheist) and invoke the goodness in each one of us.

Pictures from top to bottom: Bosnia, Congo, Darfur, Gaza, Gujarat, Haditha, Kashmiri Pandits, Rafah, Rwanda, Sri Lanka ... Katrina, Tsunami, earthquakes, 9/11 and many other tragedies...

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Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com or (214) 325-1916

Send your comments to: FoundationforPluralism@gmail.com

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Our Mission is to encourage individuals to develop an open mind and an open heart toward their follow beings. If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. We believe that knowledge leads to understanding and understanding to acceptance and appreciation of a different point of view.

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www.FoundationforPluralism.com

MAN MARRIES A DOG

MAN MARRIES A DOG
Reflections by Mike Ghouse

A few months ago, a man married a goat in Ethiopia, as a part of the atonement for his sin with the goat, he was ordered to marry the goat. The moment we hear the word wedding or marriage, we tend to think in terms of a conjugal relationships, but that does not seem to be the case in this instance. The wedding vow, Selva Kumar took is different "I will take care of it until its death." at the wedding ceremony. Taking care of it sounds really good, and the word "it" to define the gender is interesting when in an earlier sentence it used the female gender of the dog.
It is more of a union of two lives to take care of each other. Couldn't he take care of the dog without getting married? What was the purpose of the hoopla? What was the need to make it public? Is it a confession? Is it an acknowledgement of the guilt, hoping it would wash away? It is indeed a way of praischit (repentence). I hope the man feels freedom from the pain from this formal public acknowledgement. We can laugh at him or ourselves, the choice is ours.

On the other hand gratitude for friendship with a dog or a cat is expressed in terms of grand burials, and wills. This year, some where in Arizona, a lady left $200 Million in her will to her Dog. Americans spend thousands in taking care of the friends; Cats and Dogs. It is amazing how the human mind works, there is one thing certain, when you wrong some one, until you square that out, there is going to be conscious or subconscious pain or imbalance. Depending on how you go about handling it, it might get aggravated instead of subsiding. But a sense of Justice has to come about.

Every day, we do one kind of Praischit or the other at home, office and other places. We are naturally inclined to seek balance, most achieve it, some fail.

As long as we are aware of who we are, and reflect upon it daily, we will keep that balance ‘fairly’ intact.

Mike Ghouse
http://www.mikeghouse.net/

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Man in India Marries Dog

to Atone for Stoning to Death Mating Canines
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Hindustan Times, Associated Press and Time of India contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311079,00.html

NEW DELHI — Selva Kumar had been hounded for 15 years by the memory of a horrible act he'd committed as a teenager.

As an 18-year-old he had stoned and clubbed to death two dogs he found engaged in mating. He then hung their carcasses from a tree.

That's when his personal suffering began.
"After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear," Kumar told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Kumar, now 33 and living in the southern Indian district of Sivaganga, could no longer take the physical pain of the "dog curse," so he sought the advice of an astrologer.
Friends and relations attend P. Selvakumar's wedding to a dog
Her cure for his maladies?

"Marry a dog."
Which is just what Kumar did on Sunday.
In a ceremony befitting a beautiful Indian bride, the bitch, a former 10-year-old stray named "Selvi," was bathed and dressed in a ceremonial orange sari with a garland of flowers adorning her neck. She was then brought to the temple in Tamil Nadu to be presented to Kumar by members of his family.

Kumar, sitting beside his bride, recited his marriage vows, declaring, "I will take care of it until its death." Then, the "couple" was declared married.
Deeply superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to dogsand other animals, believing it can ward off certain curses.
The Hindustan Times reported Kumar's family hosted a feast — while Selvi dined on a bun.
No word on where the couple would honeymoon or reside, or whether they had registered for gifts.

______________________

Indian Girl Marries Stray Dog In India

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/coffee-lounge/6095-indian-girl-marries-stray-dog-india-lololol-no-joke.html

A nine-year-old tribal girl in eastern India has married a stray dog as part of a ritual to ward off an "evil spell" on her, Indian newspapers have reported. The girl, Karnamoni Handsa, had to be married quickly because she had a tooth rooted to her upper gum, which is considered a bad omen by her Santhal tribe in the remote village of Khanyhan, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Calcutta. "Members of the village jury asked us to get her married to a dog or to face the bad omen," the girl's father was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. The tribe elders said the marriage would not affect the girl's life, and that she would be free to marry again later and did not need to divorce the dog. "It will not spoil her future. We will marry her off to eligible bachelor when she grows up," the girl's mother told AFP. 'No regret' The wedding - which took place on 11 June - was attended by more than 100 guests, who danced to the beating of drums and drank home-made liquor. "I have no regret in marrying the dog Bacchan. I am fond of the dog who moves around our locality," the girl told the AFP. "Bacchan is a stray dog who survives on left-overs. I will take care of the dog," she added. Indian newspapers reported that local police officials had ordered an inquiry into the incident. The Santhals - most of whom are sharecroppers - are a large tribe living in the states of West Bengal and neighbouring Bihar and Jharkhand.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3004930.stm