This article is writen by a youth named Ehsan Mallik who happens to be a GED student lives in Bangladesh. He tryed to touch the reality of the youth of Bangladesh in it...so readers might find few colloquial terms in language...but hey once you are through it really will make ya think of doing something very constructive...so don't bother sitting back. If ya wanted to share anthing you can always hit the 'comment' link...thank ya.


No One Else "Rock" Than We Do...!!!

'Mountain Dew' is dearly amongst the youth as a 'Brand' rather than a 'Beverage'. Maybe because of the approach' that it comes up with. It is the approach of 'challenge' and 'toughness'. A move towards which are mixtures of 'aggressiveness' and a ‘behavior’ of facing any dares...any rough and tough challenges. At least hat's the kind of sense its advertisements try to demonstrate on TV. It’s kind of 'Do the Dew' stuff. 'Fire boarding' straight over the pouring Lava or, 'Snowboarding' at its highest risk from the highest peak of the mountain, exemplifies a few.

When you are 'doing the dew' you gatta take that jeopardy even if you are considered the only one to go for it and you survive at the end. As a youth I also liked its attitude of ‘aggressiveness’ and 'roughness’ like many others did. The behavior of facing challenges' is kind of built in us. But recently one report was found in a renowned English newspaper, that our 'Do The Dew' trademark arranged a program of challenges and welcomed all sorts of youth from all sorts of locality of Dhaka. It would absolutely excite any youngster at the first place but the more I was going through the report the more my adolescence felt the humiliation and the embarrassment. Any youth would have felt the same. Just imagine I felt such humiliation and anger in me reading that stuff that I didn't know what to do then. The report said, "around 300 youth gathered at so and so place. They were from different renowned universities and institutions. All day long these educated youth one by one threw 'Plastic Balls' from a distance at the Plastic Bottles' were kept on the heads of other contenders. It sounds easy but it became more 'challenging' because, the plastic balls were thrown, been not at their targets since it was a windy day. Dear readers, by now you must have found what humiliation I was talking about. Its worthy to be a good joke to many but I'm afraid this kind of joke doesn't end there. There this program newly started on 'ZeeTV' (never seen but once) is called some 'Challenges'. It was arranged for a search of talents from the youth. So, a youth contender was about to given the 'green light' and he was emotionally so touched that he literally sat on the ground. Mean while, the host was mocking him with a tone of 'football commentary' in front of all by saying 'So and so already sat on the ground soon be found himself lying."

We neither can avoid such humiliation at our own grounds. Today's youth are called to these so-called programs of challenges (not better than a 'Jatra Show') and are mocked everyday and everywhere. They* mock us as they tell us to do 'bok bok' and 'cow cow' every Friday (hey, I'm not against mobile phone or any kind of technology. A youth can easily afford cell phone any time but he/she doesn't have to do 'bok bok' and 'cow cow' every friday bcoz 'they tell us so'). They indeed make fun of us when they say 'jore gola charo' and 'tomakei to khujse Bangladesh' and it is done so keenly that we never get near to their plans. In one hand, they instigate our human instincts with 'Mantras' such as 'Beauty Kiss' 'Jotil Prem' or 'Kothin Prem' and on the other they label us with the term 'Bokhate Chele' or 'Ut-thi Shontrashi'. Their cleverness has way passed the wit of a 'Jackal'.

We the youth must have a long hard look at ourselves...have we gone so low...that we don't realize we are being play of their Money Making 'Cheap' games!? What on earth happened to us!? How do they dare mocking us like that!? We are the nucleus of the society... a society runs with happiness only when the youth lives in it with leadership and responsibilities. Have they forgotten that every stress and turmoil, such as flood and terrorism in our place always brought by them are fought by the youth at the frontline?? Have they forgotten about worlds major changes are brought by the Generation of youth?? I tell them to look at the 'Berlin wall' was collapsed by the youth, look at 'Gibraltar' spain (Jabal-ut-Tariq or The Mountain of Tariq is the original form) conquered by a 17 years named Tariq ibn Ziad. Youth fought for their mother tongue in 1952. Youth toppled the dictatorial rule of Ershad in the early 90's. Yet youth are to be mocked, bluffed and neglected?!!

How can we sit back and relax when we are chained and spelled by their pathetic programs, filled with disgusting ways to mock youth. The best of boldness is found from them is only to be materialized in the 'Animated version of Advertisements' and in the world of 'Fantasy' (which humiliates our personalities). Youth must realize, the essence of us is the desire of facing 'Real Challenges in the Real world'. Nonetheless, it is constantly being taken away from us. Making this 'Rare Behavior' (which is not found in the blood of Olds) Unknown to our senses.

No. Enough is enough, no room for unrealistic imaginations or the mocking chain of 'illusions' or 'Fairytales'. I guess they have forgotten what we did for them in the past. Now, it’s worth a time showing them the heat of our 'provocation', 'aggressiveness' and power of 'Intellect' (Brains).


*They/Them: Any group of people, or individual…who want to press down the 'free thinking youth' to their useless slavery and don't want them to be 'Liberated'.

Listening To Salman Rushdie


No longer hiding undercover (huh! he never was hiding and why he or the likes of him should hide!!!....while the whole corporate world is there to hire them...agrees and supports what they say) from a fatwa, Rushdie can now joke about it. But as someone who had a close encounter with religious fundamentalism long before "jihad" became part of the daily vocabulary of the West, he takes the issue with deadly seriousness. His latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, is set against the backdrop of a world of fundamentalist terror, and in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post he called for reformation in Islam.

Pacific News Service editor Sandip Roy recently interviewed Rushdie on the radio.

Sandip Roy: After the bombings in London, some people said the British concept of multiculturalism had allowed London to become 'Londonistan,' offering shelter to violent extremists.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: That's not the fault of multiculturalism. The mistake was a deliberate government policy to allow radical Islamic groups to come in and set up shop in London, to set up bank accounts and come and go as they pleased. The justification was twofold -- one was if you did that you would be able to monitor them, and the other was if you gave them safe haven they would not attack their own safe haven. On July 7 both those arguments went out the window.

But when Tony Blair says you can deport people for inciting hatred are you not punishing people for what they are saying, not doing? You yourself said, "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."

The decline of Blairite politics into the kind of arrogance and opportunism that now characterizes his government is one of the great disappointments I can remember. I don't trust Blair and his new laws further than I can throw them.

But I have to say the expulsion of some of those Londonistan figures I would not grieve about at all. Taking off my liberal hat for a moment, to throw out some of these firebrand mullahs who have been working up kids like these kids who blew themselves up, frankly I wouldn't give a damn. But there is a problem when you define offense so broadly that you can kick out anyone whose face you don't like. And given the authoritarian nature of the government one has to be very, very worried.

Sandip Roy: You are calling for a reformation in Islam. What do you mean?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: In a way maybe the use of the word "reformation" was wrong. That makes people think about Martin Luther. And the Christian reformation was a Puritan movement and that would be a movement in the wrong direction.

But I was talking about a reform movement. The purpose of that would be to reclaim Islam from the radicals. Islamic radicalism is relatively new. It had much less power 30 years ago. I think back to my grandfather, who was an extremely devout Muslim and went on the Haj to Mecca, but nevertheless an extremely open-minded and tolerant man. That's why I dedicate this book to him. Even though he was devout and I am not religious, he was a kind of model for me.

Sandip Roy: But does a call for reform, coming from a writer who many thousands of Muslims regard as blasphemous, have any legitimacy?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: You are right. There are many who will never listen to anything I say because it's me saying it. That's fair enough. I am not asking to lead anything. I am not asking to even be a part of anything. What I am saying is if something like this does not happen, the danger is that all Muslims will begin to seem as if they are complying with the activities of the radicals. If there isn't a strong rejectionist voice, many people, particularly in the diaspora where Muslims are in the minority, will readily come to think that if you are not rejecting the stuff, that's what you secretly think. That would be catastrophic.

Sandip Roy: But standing up to extremism is hard. In 1990 you yourself published a statement of remorse.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: There were enormous pressures on me, including government pressure to make some kind of gesture. But I regretted doing it. I felt the thing that gives me credibility is I say exactly what I think. And if I compromise that I lose myself and that's what I felt briefly at that moment. So I tried rapidly to un-say it.

But I think there are voices out there beginning to speak up. In response to the piece I wrote (for the Washington Post), a lot of people wrote and said they agreed.

Sandip Roy: What is the best thing the United States and the West can do to facilitate this reform? Just stay out of it?

SALMAN RUSHDIE:The danger is to do deals with the bad guys. I think the problem is the West, for its own economic purposes, makes agreements and thus shores up regimes that would more easily fall. We support regimes that in another part of the forest we condemn.

In the end I don't want this to be a story of what the West is doing to the East. Because I found all my life as a writer it was too easy to make that statement. The more interesting thing to say is suppose this is our own fault, supposing we are doing this to ourselves. The reason why I try to stress the need for changes inside the Muslim world is not that I don't believe there is racism, of course there is racism, it's not that I don't believe there is oppression, of course there is oppression. What I am saying is that to take responsibility for your life is a better way to live than to assume you are an endless victim.

My reamarks to this Interview...and a question: By saying Islam and Muslims are fundamentalist and having thought of the reformation of Islam...the enemy of Islam planing right away and the west itself is supporting it in everyway they can to suppress Islam. They would do anything, even if it hurts the feelings of the world's one of the huge population (Muslims) who want to live their lives abiding by Islam and want to Invite the rest of the mankind to life's tranquility. But here these culprits the so called mouth of the elites want to defame Islam and depriving the whole of mankind from a healthy and progressive life...and at last the question, why do they call others fundamentalists...while they themselves are holding a fundamental opinion that is to object Islam and to want amendments in the system of Islam??? Its really a funny matter to ponder upon...Muslims are now realising their infamous plots and plans against muslims and Islam...InshaAllah while the Khilafah state is in re-establishment they are being afraid that their rhetoric expressions of so called "doing good to this world of humanity" be revealed to the mass people. Let for once the system of Khilafah be revived on this earth...will they realize how wrong they thought of.