MOHEMMED GILL

  

Dear Darvesh Sahib:

Thanks for your e-mail. I enjoyed reading your essays. They are quite perceptive. Apropos of agnosticism, I might like to point out that your comment about them is not very accurate. You wrote as follows about the agnostics:      

“To me they seem emotionally confused and intellectually lazy.” 

They are neither emotionally confused nor intellectually lazy. On the other hand, they are very honest. Existence of God can neither be logically proved nor disproved. So they don't care one way or the other. To them, God's existence or non-existence doesn't make any difference. Many of them believe that God was the creation of human imagination but there is no definite way of proving (or disproving) it. 

With regards, 

Mohammad Gill

 

  

 

DR. KHALID SOHAIL

  

Dear Mohammad Gill,

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Personally I agree with you that agnostics are not emotionally confused and intellectually lazy but in my story I wanted to present many points of view

through different characters to challenge people and their views. That is why there are advantages in writing a short story piece or play or novel as compared to an essay.

Do you mind if I put your letter with my response on my website alongside the story. Did you receive my PROPHETS book.

Looking forward to your comments whenever you have time to read the book and respond. You are a wonderful addition to my circle of friends.

I value your opinions and I hope I meet you one of these days. affectionately sohail

 
   

 

MOHEMMED GILL

  
 
Dear Sohail Sahib:
You are welcome to use my letter as you like if you think it's worthy for that purpose. Regarding your book "Prophet's of Violence ...," I read it selectively. It's well-written and very readable. There is one correction which I would like to bring to your attention. On page 87, you wrote, "He (Iqbal) was so much in awe of Marx that he called him a prophet without a holy book, an atheist prophet." In fact, Iqbal wrote, "He (Marx) is not a prophet but has the book in the pit of his arm."
Iqbal's exact words are: "Nee'st paighambar wa'laikan dar baghl daard kitab." I am forgetting the first line of the verse; the whole discourse is in Armaghan-e-Hijaz. I have my library in our basement which my son is fixing these days. Everything is topsy turvy. I wanted to quote the complete verse but I could not find my copy of Iqbal's Kulliyaat in the basement. Your knowledge of Iqbal is impressive. With regards,
Mohammad Gill
 
 

DR. KHALID SOHAIL

  
 
Dear Mohammad Gill...
Thank you for your positive comments
and sharing Iqbal's verse.
You are right as the literal interpretation.
I took the implied meaning. For Iqbal to use the word...kitaab...was significant.
I thought he was presenting Das Kapital as the earthly book as compared to heavenly books. But that is my interpretation.
I was just fascinated how much Iqbal was impressed by Marx and Socialism even to write jis khait say dehkan ko moyassar na ho rozi us khait kay har khosha-e-gandam ko jala do
affectionately sohail

RAFI AAMER

  

Dear Dr. Sohail,  

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Gill for coming to the defense of us agnostics. I would also disagree with one of the characters in your story about agnostics being morally confused. I think agnosticism is the only scientifically consistent position. 

The first verse that Mr. Gill was looking for is  

wo kaleem-e-be-tajjali, wo masih-e-be-saleeb 

The darvesh in your story is an admirable character who is tolerant of other views and encourages dialogue. The world needs such darveshs. However, he seems to be a fan of over-simplifications when he provides his thoughts towards the conclusion of the story. He ignores that Moses and Jesus were founders of schools of thought that are responsible for division of humanity and sufferings and mental persecution of millions of people. On his way to the promised land, Moses, who taught his people "Thou Shalt Not Murder", left in his wake a trail of death and destruction of towns that were unfortunate enough to be in the way of his people. For the darvesh in your story to call people like Moses "great", left a bad taste in my mouth. For a Humanist to ignore the larger implications of the teaching of a particluar person and concentrate on a trivial detail is intellectual laziness to me. Another example of over-simplification by the darvesh is saying that Einstein declared everything being relative. I think darvesh is confusing everything being relative to Einstein's theory of relativity. While its true that this has been attributed to Einstein and his theory of relativity thousands of times, it is also true that Einstein agreed with Planck's view of absolutism of physical laws of nature. It was just motion, according to my very limited understanding of the Einstein's findings, which is relative. This is another example of the lack of intellectual due dilligence on darvesh's part.  I don't know enough about Freud and Marx to say anything in their regard. What boggles my mind that is that in the list of great people, darvesh has Moses, Jesus and Freud (I have reservations about Marx too) but not Charles Darwin. I don't know if darvesh realizes how fortunate he is to live in a post-Darwin world where one of the biggest puzzles of human history stand resolved.

 
Yours truly, 
Rafi

 

DR. KHALID SOHAIL TO RAFI AAMER

  
Dear Rafi...Thank you for your valuable comments.
Philosophically speaking I am in full agreement with you. We are both at the same wavelength.
I shared with Mohammad Gill that I have a lot of respect for agnostics.
As far as Darwin is concerned I have a lot of regard for him too. That is why I had suggested to have a seminar on his life and works. I had also ordered his biography and his book DESCENT OF MAN to read. I was quite impressed by his insights in human psychology alongside human biology. He was a great man.
The story of 5 great men is not created by me. It has been around for a long time like many folktales. I like it as it highlights that different people have different truths and we need to accept and respect other people's personal, psychological and philosophical truths.
One benefit of writing poems and plays and stories as comapred to writing essays is that one can present different points of views through different characters to challange different concepts.
I hope you appreciate my poetic licence.
Thank you one more time for your thoughtful considerations and comments.
With due regards...
affectionately sohail
ps...I will forward it to Pervaiz to put it on my website

 
 
 
 
 

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