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Subject:Jihad fi Sabil il Platform From:Sabahat Ashraf <sabahat_ashraf -at- MENTORG -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:22:55 EST
[the subject is my way of saying "Jihad for the sake of the Platform"]
Now that we *are* having a holy war, I thought I would throw in a set of
fundamentalist "na'ray" as we call them in the subcontinent. Take your pick of
slogans:
Leader: Tayba r' Tayba!!
Chorus: Tayyyyyyyba!!!
[favourite war cry of the subcontinent's fraternal version of the Ikhwaan --
just one 4 feet high skeleton of a guy with a wispy beard leading about 10
Jamaatis in this chant can throw the fear o'God into you, believe me.]
Leader: Dhayaar-e-haq, Dhayaar-e-haq!
Chorus: Ya Nabi kay saaray haq!!
[which approximates to Leader: The Limit of The Truth
Chorus: All the Truths of saying "Oh my Prophet"]
This is the fanatic Sunni reply to Shia cries like:
Leader: Nara-e-Haidari!
Chorus: Ya Ali!!
[which approximates to Leader: The Slogan of Haider (another name for Ali)
Chorus: Oh Ali!! (the grandson of the Prophet; main
figure in the Shia dogma and canon]
Meanwhile, on the other side of our AK-47-infested [courtesy of Cap Weinberger,
Al Haig, George Shultz, and The Gipper] campus were the Reds going:
Surkh hai, Surkh hai; Asia Surkh hai!!
[Red! Red!! Asia is REd!!]
to which our Bhai-log ["brothers" -- the Jamaatis mentioned above] went:
Sabz hai, Sabz hai; Asia Sabz hai!!
[Green! Green!! Asia is Green!! -- Green being the colour of Islam]
Well, mes amis, mi amigos, my colleagues, what we always said to these guys
was:
Surkh hai na Sabz hai: Asia koe Qabz hai!!
NEITHER RED NOR GREEN: ASIA IS CONSTIPATED!!
On a more mundane level, I grew up using a DOS [512kb] machine and graduated to
Windows. And as a Computer Systems Engineering was taught a lot about
microchips; and then taught the assembly language of the 80X86 Intel
microchips. And then, in the last year of our bachelors'; after realizing that
Intel/IBM was going full 32-bit in a couple of years; we took *one* course on
Motorola chips -- and realized that Motorola had been 32-bit for years and
years. Knocked our socks off. Couldn't really grasp why anyone would stay
16-bit by choice for so long.
But when it came to using computers, DOS/Windows was native enviroment.
Changing a filename took several minutes: start file manager; click on file;
click on File>Rename ... Then I went back to school and then to an internship
where I used Mac`s exlusively for seven months. I daresay I took a while to get
used to it, but enjoyed changing names at a whim -- till I had to find out how
many jobs were ahead of mine in the print queue. No way of doing that in
Appletalk.
As I like to say, I have learned to hate both of them with equal passion.
And *that* my dear colleagues is what I have to say to people that engage in
holy wars for the sake of argument. Winston Churchill said it a little better:
For forms of government
Let fools contest
What is best administered
Is best
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