letters To Editor, Toronto Star
January 30, 2010
Stamp dredges up colonial past

The following letter was sent to the Toronto Star:

Those among us, who want to do something, stand up and do it. But there is a strong tendency among Muslims to go alone. This is true in many endeavors including Islamic or social work. Instead of joining an existing organization, we want to start one. It has harmful effect on existing organizations, and the chances of success of new organization are also not very good. It is a Loose, Loose situation.

I received a call from an elderly Muslim. He was enquiring about Ramadan Chicken. I provided canned response that we do not handle distribution and he needs to go to the food bank to pickup. He then told me that he was 85 years old, and that he uses a walker and depends on WheelTran for transportation. My heart melted, and I offered to pick some chicken for him from the food bank and deliver to his home.

Most people rejoice on others happy occasions. We wish them well on those occasions. We wish Christians “Merry Christmas” on Christmas and to other religions we utter greetings to signify well wishes. For Muslims Ramadan is a special occasion. We wish each other ‘Ramadan Mubarak’. Many non-muslims express similar sentiment in many different words.

I answered my phone; silence for a while, a sure sign of telemarketer’s call from automatic dialer. It dials hundreds of telephone, until a phone answered by a human being. Telemarketer scrambles to make the call, as he has been working on something else. There is a time lag, momentary silence which gives away his presence. I have developed a strategy against telemarketer by hanging up when I detect the tell tale silence.

Welcome to visitors from Geeks&God (http://geeksandgod.com/ ). This is a site of developers serving Christian churches exclusively. A while ago I stumbled on that site, while looking for Drupal technical knowledge. Geeks & God site is excellent on technical and use case innovations. From them I got the idea for web site accessible on cell telephone and I leveraged it by building a site using free software from http://www.mobisitegalore.com . I reported this success to Geeks & God (episode 111). Since then we have hosted 52 referrals. We are gratified and we welcome them all.

Internet has done marvel in communication. It has made it ridiculously cheap and accessible to all. One of the bye products has been disastrous effect on the telephone companies. Their expansive and ancient copper and lately optical networks have competition with modern and high speed internet. Telco network is proprietary while internet is open and egalitarian. It allows innovation from millions of people. One of the innovations was carrying of telephone signals on internet, by passing Telco networks. These signals are carried through VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).

In a recent TVO program ‘Agenda’ Tarek Fattah said about MuslimServ’s Jihad to feed the hungry in the name of Islam. As usual Tarek Fattah was railing against Islam and painting Jihad and indeed Islam as violent. Just then Steve Paikin read excerpt of my post. Tarek's sheepish response

“Alhamdu lillah, that is how Jihad should be”

There was a time when immigrant, especially of colour, used to feel Liberal party as the natural home. It was the party which supported aspiration of all people and cultures, and it was party which gave us multicultural policies. Many of us, including myself have been ‘dyed in the wool’ Liberals, for they spoke for us and supported our goals and aspirations.