Incident no. 1-Met this girl on my way from Bangalore to Bhopal .

Smart and very

beautiful .She had this cute little nose which
really got me thinking ,is she the one ?? ..Naa just kidding :) ,,Okey so she
asked me my name ."Samir" was the reply and then we hit off, clicked really well
.We talked n talked continuously for hours .
Now as most of you already know , the fun loving ,easy going guy that I am
people, generally open up quite easily with me and so did this girl.We chatted and
joked about many things.
A few of the jokes she cracked were on pakis and in general on Muslims as well.The
jokes were light hearted nothing really to feel bad about.
So we were cool n went about making a mockery of the other things in the world as
well .Had a gr88 time .Then probably just half an hour before I was about to
reach my destination she asked me what my full name was , and I told her .
The eyes opened wide , the color of the face went red and there was the term "Holy
Shit" (that I use quite often)
written all over.Her eyes cud not meet mine and for the split seconds they did
,they said how could u not tell me this before.I did what I usually do in such
situations,
,quickly changed the subject ...was I angry with her about something? no, not at
all .. did I get her mobile no . ? No i did not ,:) not even a few digits.:)

Incident no. 2- This incident refers to the time when I met for the first time a
girl who was going to be one of my very best friend for a long time.
The conversation caught pace and momentum in the same way as in incident 1 the
only difference being that we were not in a train but were in a Wipro bus
going from home to office.I was talking about how much I hated shopping and was
telling her about how I used to kill time when i used to go shopping with my
mom as kid.I had certain strange ideas which she found quite amusing .I also told
her about the time when my mom was in Bangalore and we went shopping to
commercial street. Undoubtedly one the most dread full days of my life.7 hours of
non stop shopping..this was first time in my life when I actually started thinking

of going legal against my mom for the mental stress and agony she had caused me.:)
Well the reference of commercial street reminded my friend of something.She came
closer and whispering into my ear
said ,"You know wat ,I don't like going to commercial street because there are
many mullah kids/guys over there." She had not realised that the guy into the ears
of whom she whispered that comment was a mullah himself and probably the only
Muslim guy on board that bus.
Then eventually when she got my surname ,she showed similar reactions of
embarrassment.The poor girl didn't find the guts to talk to me for nearly a week
after that.

Now if you must have noticed in both incidents referred above I never felt
offended or anything and just changed the subject.Why did I do this.Am I a non-
believer.
No of course not.The reason I did not feel bad is because this is how the world
looks at Muslims these days.Reasons-one being a chunk of people who call
themselves Jihadis and
kill innocents and the second being exaggerated negative publicity.Everyday a
common man sees on the news channels Muslim "Jihadis" going on slaughtering men
,women and children.Natural tendency is to blame
Muslims for being intolerant and Islam for being a violence preaching
religion.This is the image one holds of Islam and its followers.

I have tried to find the meaning of Jihad on google and the definitions I have
found are correct only to a certain extent .
Most go like this �the greater jihad�, a spiritual struggle against the evil
within oneself, and a �lesser jihad�, physical effort in the cause of Islam, which
is
just fine.But none of these definitions outline the rules of the lesser Jihad.
They instead start off citing examples of brutalities done by Muslims in the name
of
Jihad.

You would be amazed when I say this but in actuality if there are some who really
understand Islam, its a bunch of highly educated Saudi ,
American and British scholars.Only a few of them are
Muslims but these People have spent their lives steeped in the study of Quran.How
they interpret the Quran
is the way any educated Muslim or non-Muslim would ,if he/she really tried to.I
can give you two reasons for this
a)These scholars have studied the Quran in and out and understand exactly what the
Quran aims to preach.They have not been taught about Islam by an illiterate
Maulana Sahab who may have memorised each line in
the Quran understands only 30% of it.
b)These are highly educated people who have obtained formal modern education from
the Oxfords and Cambridges of this world.
Unlike you and me they have not built their perceptions by what they have heard
from their parents or have seen on TV news channels.Instead they have spent years
researching on Islam and its teachings.

So if I or you would really like to know something about Islam why not see things
as these scholars see it .

Below is an narrative of the teachings of Islam as understood by an educated

person.
Islam is a very simple religion which outlines for its followers only a few
duties(5 pillars of Islam)
1)Having Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophet
hood of Muhammad.
2)Offering prayers 5 times a day
3)Helping the needy and destitute .(Pre-Requisite :you are well off)
4)Fasting in the month of Ramadan
5)Performing Haj at least once in a life time.(Pre-Requisite:you are well off in
terms of health and wealth)

All other practises followed are either Hadiths or are wrongly followed.Hadiths
are basically a collation of teachings by Prophet Mohamed
and tell us the practises he followed to be a good human and hence a good
Muslim.These practises are optional.
But if you follow them you always end up doing something good for yourself or
society.What really needs to be noted here is that these teachings were
based on needs or situations pertaining to times hundreds of years ago.In modern
times there might be better ways of doing the same.For example the prophet had
taught people to be neat and
clean at all times .So one of measures was to use the Datoon(small and soft
branches of tree (twigs)) to clean the teeth.This was because the datoon was more
efficient over the finger when it came
to cleaning ones teeth.But looking at this in the current context definitely a
pepsodent tooth brush along with tooth paste would be a better option(No Pepsodent

is not one of my sponsors).But still you will find ignorant Muslims saying that
you should not use a tooth brush but should use the Datoon because that is the
rule .They are
wrong,the focus was on cleanliness and not on using the datoon.The prophet had not
seen the future and was not aware that the tooth brush was going to revolutionize
the dental care industry.

Jihad , defined by Wikepedia is as follows �the greater jihad�, a spiritual

struggle against the evil within oneself, and a �lesser jihad�, physical effort in
the cause of Islam .What I would like
to add to this are the RULES that are very clearly outlined in the Quran.

1)Jihad can be declared only by a Koranic Scholar.All Jihads declared in the past
few decades have been declared by people who are not even remotely recognized as
Islamic
scholars .
2)It is forbidden to attack, kill those who have offered no offense.
3)It is forbidden to attack or kill women and children.
4)The warrior must not die by his OWN HAND even though the mission he has
volunteered for is a no-return mission.Therefore you don't become martyr blowing
yourself
in a shopping mall or even a battle ground for that matter.Both the suicide bomber
and the mastermind who plans the mission are destined to end up in hell.
Note: Jihad is not one of the 5 pillars of Islam .Neither can it be called the 6th
pillar of Islam.No one in this world has the rights to amend(add/update/delete)
the 5 pillars.

So what you see happening around you is not a struggle that is certified by Islam
or that helps Islam in any way.It is majorly a struggle for power in parts of
the world that lack strong and capable leadership.Politicians of most nations have
been doing what they do best by breeding hatred and intolerance amongst the
masses.

Coming back to the train and bus incident,as i would like to see this :) both
girls liked spending time with me when they did not know my real identity.when
they got know my real identity
both felt embarrassed because they felt they shouldn't have made the statements
they had made.But the main point to be noted was this incident would have made
them re-build the
image they carried of a Muslim .So even though I didn't get a mobile no. I am
happy about the fact that I was able to change perceptions .

Thanks for reading this.