Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Muslims, as I think...

The Muslim of India is akin to the Hindu and has no resemblance whatsoever to the Muslim in Turkey, Iran or any Arab country. In fact, the Muslims of those countries customarily refer to Muslims of India as 'Hindis' only. What then is the factor that separates local Muslims from Hindus? Most of the Muslims do not yet regard India as their home of which they must feel proud. Many regard themselves, quite wrongly, I think, as belonging to the race of conquerers. Many consider their forefathers to be Aurangazeb, Humayun etc., who are worshiped as heroes. But none of them are descendants of these alien invaders(looters?). These are a peculiar new community, being the progeny of Hindus who had been converted to Islam, many time by fraud, temptation or force. Physically they are children of Hindustan, but mentally aligned with foreign invaders.

“There is not an inch of soil of India which our forefathers did not once purchase with their blood. We cannot be false to the blood of our forefathers. India the whole of it, is therefore our heritage and it must be conquered by Islam. Expansion in the spiritual sense is an inherent necessary of our faith and implies no hatred or enmity towards the Hindus. Rather the reverse. Our ultimate Ideal should be the unification of India, spiritually as well as politically, under the banner of Islam. The final political salvation of India is not otherwise possible”
~ A.F. Khan Durrani ( writes in the preface to his book 'THE MEANING OF PAKISTAN')


Are these foreign invaders really the heroes to be adored? As the great Historian Will Durant describes ' The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history', during which the persecution of Hindus was conducted by massive ethnic cleansing. Forced religious conversion, enslavement, desecration and demolishment of Hindu temples and ashrams, and mass-rapes of Hindu women and sexual abuse of Hindu children were common during those days. Even the great Tipu Sultan, wanted to Islamise the entire south India. He had to wage a war against the Britishers when they prevented him from doing so, as the British wanted to rule them. Is he an Indian freedom fighter?

“Kashiji ki kalaa jaati, Mathuraa masjid hoti
Shivaji na hote to sunnat hoti sab ki”
(The beauty of Benaras would have vanished, Mathura would have turned into a Masjid, and all would have been circumcised, had not Shivaji been born)


The recent controversy over the recitation of Vande mataram raises doubts about the national spirit of the Muslims. I know that forcing someone to sing VandeMataram might not inculcate patriotism in them, but opposing to such things will definitely draw a line of demarcation between the Muslims and the Hindus, which might further split the nation in two. I don't understand why they always bring religion on issues concerning the nation. On September 7, a Muslim school in Lucknow preferred to sing Mohammad Iqbal's 'saare jahan se achha..' instead of 'Vande Mataram'. The Muslims should understand the fact that, even though we follow different religions we share a common motherland, and should never bring religion in all such matters. In contrast, the Hindus throughout the country sing 'Allah ke bande..', 'ya ali..' etc., without thinking of religion even once. This is what I call a true secularism! I know that there are Muslims who are loyal to the nation, but when a section of them are bent upon breaking the solidarity of our nation, I don't find any hesitation to blame the community as a whole. And their brothers, if they are true to the nation, should take the lead rather than supporting them. One thing that you got to observe is that most of the Muslims in India blindly follow the Mullahs and the Malvis. It is only because of these Mullahs, that a large section of Muslim community is uneducated. The statistics show that only 3.1% of the Muslims are graduates and 1.2% are post-graduates. The Mullahs insist upon sending the Muslim children to Madrassas rather than schools, so that they can keep these people under their control. These Mullahs issue fatwas against whichever is anti-Islamic (according to their interpretation). But not even a single fatwa has been issued against terrorism, which lies in the core of their religion. They proclaim that terrorism has no religion. But you cannot run away from certain facts. The fact that ' all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims' is enough to say that Terrorism lies in the core of Islam. All the prime accused of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts (for the matter of fact, any) are all the local muslims, who are the citizens of India. Now the question arises: what is that provokes these people to become Terrorists? The fact is that Madrassas have become the recruitment grounds of Islamic terrorists who brainwash the Muslim youth to believe that converting the Kafir land of India (Dar-Ul-Harb) into an Islamic Nation (Dar-Ul-Islam) is the sacred duty of every Muslim and therefore the Muslims must engage themselves in Jihad or Holy war to destroy the Kafirs. Their religious teachings not only brainwashes the uneducated but also the well learned. The best example that I can give is the case of Mohammad Iqbal, who had written 'Saare jahan se achha, Hisndustan hamaraa..'. The same person, after his return from Germany, where he had delved deep into Islamic studies, then writes ' muslim hain hum, watan hain saara jahan hamara' (we are Muslims and the whole world is our land).

George Bernard Shaw quotes:
“Islam is a religion where You will be butchered for worshiping other religions, for which you will go to hell and he will go to heaven.”
He further writes:
“Islam is the best religion and Muslims are the worst followers.”


The behavior of the Muslims all over the world is more or less the same. Whenever the Muslims are in a minority they have been generally reluctant to regard themselves as a part and parcel of a non-religious nation. For example, the Muslims of France, who constitute 24%, are clamoring for separate civil laws based on Shariat, and this is the same case in all other countries including India. The recent revolts of Muslims in Philippines, Thailand, Ethiopia, are merely expressions of the Muslim unwillingness to participate in a common social order on equal terms with others. Whenever Muslims are in a majority they have refused to recognize the equal rights to non-muslim minorities. During the partition of our country, Pakistan signed an agreement that it would make sure that the rights and the safety of the minorities would be taken proper care. But through planned activities of persecution and torture and forced conversion of minority Hindus and Christians, the number of minorities in Pakistan has gone down from 24% in 1947 to almost 1% today. In Bangladesh too, the number of minorities has gone down from 30% in 1947 to 7% today. What happened to these minorities?? Did they leave their nation and came back to India? I guess not. In contrast, the Muslim population in India has gone up from 10% in 1947 to almost 14% today; whereas the Hindu population has come down from 88% in 1947 to 81% today. The answer to these questions is not only because of conversion, but also because of giving birth to large number of children. There was a case in Mallapuram (Kerala) where a doctor found 3 generations of Muslim women –daughter(13), Mother(26) and grandmother(39) all pregnant being admitted for delivery.

Every religion has certain flaws. Even the Hindu religion was blindfolded by sati, casteism etc. After constant reformation by the Hindu intelligentsia these things have been abolished. The outdated notion of Manu Smruti has been rejected by VHP and Dharmacharyas. Among the Muslims there is conspicuous absence of unbiased self-critical and rational individuals who can discuss the problems fruitfully. Their so-called leaders are usually the leaders of a blind, orthodox, and ill-educated community. All of them put forward the arguments in the same tone again and again. When they find faults, the faults are invariable the faults of others. They do not have the capacity to understand their own mistakes. Atleast the Muslim intelligentsia who have understood the flaws should courageously strive hard to reform their society. Unless this is done riots, terror attacks etc. can never be put to an end.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good man to do nothing.”
~Edmund Burke


Indonesia, which was a part of Bharat long ago, affords a striking example of an Islamic country deeply imbued with Hindu culture. To the muslims who form about 80% of the population, Islam has remained very much their personal faith, but their national culture continues to be a Hindu -their culture before their conversion to Islam. Ramayana and Mahabharata are their national epics. They worship Ganesha and saraswati. Their currency notes have an image of Lord Ganesha (see the image below). Their constitution begins with the declaration “Dharmo rakhsati rakhitah”. Garuda, the mount of Vishnu, adorns the name of their airways. The epic hero Dronacharya inspires their defence academy. Most of the people bear the illustrious names of ancient Bharat. The Indonesians affirm with pride that they have changed their religion but not their ancestors. If any Indonesian visits India, it is more than a sight-seeing, it is a pilgrimage. But in India the first thing for a convert is to adopt an Arabic name. There was a ridiculous case in Perayur (Mathura district, Tamilnadu), where a convert named Mathu Karuppiah became Saddam Hussain. Let us realize and believe that we all are children of this soil coming from the same stock, that our forefathers are one and our aspirations are also one!

taken from my dear friend deepak http://deepakmarla.blogspot.com/

Monday, September 03, 2007

How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide

Although thesitewizard.com contains guides for a wide variety of issues faced by a webmaster, new or old, none of them provide a step by step A-Z guide for getting started with your website. As a result, I'm often asked by people who are absolute newcomers where they should start. Having an encyclopaedia in your hands is not much use if you don't know which articles you should read first, and which next. This tutorial attempts to fill in the gaps by providing you an overview of the web creation process from the beginning, linking to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to read.
The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Starting Your Own Website

1.
Get Your Domain Name

The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. A domain name is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you're reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with the name.
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Detailed information on getting a good domain name can be found in the article Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name.
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After you read that, you will need to know the steps to registering a domain name and the things you need to look out for when registering. You can find a detailed guide in the article How to Register Your Own Domain Name.
2.
Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is analogous to renting office premises for your business.
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There are many issues involved in finding a good web host. Read up on the various things you need to look for in searching for a good web host in the article How to Choose a Web Host.
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After you have an idea of what to look for, you can search for one from the Budget Web Hosting page. You can also find out which web host I'm currently using from the Which Web Host Do You Recommend? page.
3.
Designing your Web Pages

Once you have your domain name and web host, your next step will be to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are using a third party web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step.
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Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you've figured out how to get a basic web page onto your site. One way is to use a WYSIWYG web editor to do it. There are many commercial and free web editors around. If you don't mind spending money on a commercial web editor, one of the most highly-regarded WYSIWYG web editors is Dreamweaver. Thesitewizard.com has a tutorial on how you can use Dreamweaver to create your website: Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS3.

If you prefer to use free software, you can find a complete tutorial on using Nvu, a free WYSIWYG web editor, in the article How to Design and Publish Your Website with Nvu. The tutorial takes you through the steps to creating a website that has a home page, an about page, a site map, a links page and a feedback form. It also teaches you some of the basic features of the Nvu software so that you can go on improving and updating your website on your own.

There are many other web design software around. If you prefer not to use either of the above, you can find some others listed on thefreecountry.com's Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page.
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After you have followed my tutorial, and are on the way to designing your website, you might want to read the article Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design as well. The article takes a brief look at some of the real world issues that every web designer must deal with.
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An integral part of web design is search engine readiness. Search engine promotion does not start after the web site is made. It starts at the web design stage. Some essential pages to read include my article on How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google for the simple reason that, at the time this article was written, Google is the most important search engine around.
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There are many other issues regarding the design of web pages. The above will get you started. However, if you have the time after you get something out onto the web, you may want to read my other articles on Web Design and Website Promotion and Search Engine Ranking.
4.
Testing Your Website

Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.

You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 6, the latest versions of Firefox ( Get Firefox with Google Toolbar ) Opera and Safari. Since all these browsers are free anyway, it should not be any hardship to get them and install them. The trick however, is testing with two versions of Internet Explorer since the later version will overwrite the earlier. For that, please see the article How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking). Although there are two possible ways given in the article, I suggest that you take use the emulator/virtual machine method to do this. (It's probably easier.) Read the article to find out more.

One way to improve your chances that your website will work in future versions of the web browsers is to make sure your web pages' code validate as correct. You can read more about this in HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? There are numerous free web page validators listed on the Free HTML Validators, Broken Link Checkers, Browser Compatibility Checkers page.
5.
Collecting Credit Card Information, Making Money

If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information. You should read up on How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website.

If you need advertisers for your website, you might want to read How to Make Money From Your Website and the follow-up article How to Increase Your Website Revenue from Affiliate Programs. A list of advertisers and affiliate programs can be found on Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers. These companies are on the constant lookout for new web publishers to display their advertisements.
6.
Getting Your Site Noticed

When your site is ready, you will need to submit your site to the search engines, particularly Google. You can find the Google submission page by clicking on the "About Google" link on Google, and then locating the "Submit your content to Google" link on the page that appears. However, submitting your site to Google alone is, quite frankly, a pointless endeavour. If there are no other links to your site on the web, Google will be appear most reluctant to index your site and show results that include your pages. If there are many other links to your site, you don't even have to bother to submit it to Google - it will find your site by itself.

This is where promoting your website is important. This involves many things, including the usual way people did things before the Internet: advertisements in the newspapers, word-of-mouth, etc. You might want to consider advertising on Google itself using Google Adwords. ( Bring targeted traffic to your site with Google AdWords ) As discussed in my article More Tips on Google Search Engine Results Placement, this is one of the quickest way to get onto the first page of Google's search engine results page.

There are also Less Obvious Ways of Promoting Your Website, which you might want to consider.

Conclusion

Naturally the above guide is not exhaustive. It is a distillation of some of the basic steps to getting started with your site. If you want more information, you should read the other articles on thesitewizard.com. However, the above tutorial should get you started in putting your website onto the Internet.