Hi, I’m Rohit Narayan and I currently live in Austin – TX.
As you can tell from my name, I am of Indian origin and I moved to the US almost 15 years ago. I came to the US as a software engineer and worked at Netscape (remember Netscape Communications?) in the SF Bay Area. Then I decided to go back to school to do an MBA in 2002. Ever since, I have been living in Austin with my wife and 2 kids.
I have often toyed with the idea of starting a BLOG as a venue for me to express so many opinions and ideas that keep coming to me. These ideas do not neatly fit into any one genre or category and hence are best called “musings”. In keeping with the nature of “musings”, I have been uncertain about the regularity with which I can keep up with this effort and this has been the primary reason I have stalled actually getting one.
Then the Mumbai carnage occured in the Thanksgiving week of 2008 and something snapped! I have been a resident of Mumbai (Mumbai-kar) for most of my childhood. Mumbai (or Bombay as I have known it) has been the place of my formative years. To see that city in abject tatters generated a tsunami of emotions ranging from rage to frustration to sorrow. I found myself venting in the solitude of my car during my daily commute. And here is when I decided to start this BLOG.
Exposing the blood soaked crescent
I have long been un-impressed and un-persuaded by religious sentiments or religious ideology. But I was content with treating religiosity with studied indifference (if not a quiet disdain). But the Mumbai carnage awoke me to the fact that my silence was being treated as apathy and abused by religious extremists – particularly Islamic zealots. This blog is my modest attempt at reclaiming the conversation.
I do not have any specific direction or objective other than to state my mind. Hence the name : My Mind Droppings….. Hope you like it. If you need to contact me email me at rohitnarayanWP AT Gmail dot com.
Thanks for stopping by.
Hi there HolyDude,
Bruce returning the visit!
Hi Holydude, as a person growing up in India and having muslim friends, I bought into the media propaganda and lies about Islam being a peaceful religion and thought it was muslims who were to blame and not Islam. In fact, I found my muslim friends nice humans and felt guilty in blaming their religion.
My transformation and step into reality started before the mumbai attacks though when I started reading the Koran and reading the explanations of verses both by imams and ex-muslims like Ali-sina and ibn warraq. The ones by ex-muslims like Ali sina made so much sense than the ones by muslims. They seemed much more logical and truthful. Anyway after spendng months reading about Islam, I finally concluded that it was indeed mostly an evil cult with a few saving graces.
Since then, I have tried to write about it although I feel that with sites like FFI, islam-watch, jihadwatch etc make most of my writings redundant. However, I do commend your bravery for writing about Islam especially without a pseudonym. Any societal change needs to build on a critical mass of thinkers and I think both of us contribute towards that. All the best in your endeavours. Stay safe and keep writing.
Hi Nastik,
Thanks for your kind words.
I have been a skeptic for a long time but did not feel the need to confront religiosity overtly. I guess I was a bit lazy and felt that in a world illuminated by rationality, superstitions could be just ignored. However, I have come to the realization that religion is not in the habit of staying in its corner. It will try to dominate and Islam is even more assertive and dominant in its character.
In view of this, it is all the more important to be defiant because silence (or indifference) is being considered by Islamists as weakness to be exploited. Notice the brazenness with which British Islamists dare to flaunt Sharia and insist on its application in Britain. They don’t reach that conclusion in a single day. They do it over time advancing one inch and one issue at a time.
Modern civil society on the other hand is so besotted with Multiculturalism that we not only grant them a platform to spew their vile nonsense, we actually act as though the stuff they say is legitimate.
We need to draw a line and say “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”. We need to show that although we can allow diverse thought, we are not obliged to tolerate nonsense. We need to treat such mind-sets with the contempt these ideas deserve.
And we cannot do this just by being quiet and “tolerant”. That is the driving motivation for this Blog.
Some thoughts to consider:
- How did a mostly Christian dominated west create Israel by taking Arab land in the first place? Why wasn’t Israel carved out of Germany, or the US.
- US heavily funds Israel. Palestine receives no such funding, what can they do but fight with the only, pathetic weapons they have, sadly themselves.
- How many islamic missionaries do you see vs Christian missionaries trying to “save” you
- My friend asked me, if you see Amish people doing their own thing, would it provoke the same response that women in veils do? Is that not racism on our part?
- On a more extreme front, how are what the terrorists doing different than what Christians did, exterminating entire civilizations and forcible conversions to Christianity
- Hypothetical question – would US have dropped the A-bomb on a Christian nation?
PS I too came from India, practicing Hindu. No vested interest in defending Islam (you’ll have to take my word for it). No one in my family is Moslem, and the Mumbai attacks disgust me. But I cannot blame the religion blindly without at least looking at the past 2000 years of facts and events.
Hi Rohit, excellent blog. Came here from KG’s blog, and I’ll be back regularly.
Maidak: About the Amish – I think they’re rather ridiculous, but no great threat to anyone, and this is why the response to Amish customs is not the same as the response to Muslim customs. The Amish, as far as I know, keep to themselves and do not try to impose their beliefs or customs on anyone else. The Muslims – and all other religions, in various degrees – DO NOT. This is why the Amish deserve a couple of jokes a year, while Islam deserves a regular barrage of ridicule and criticism.
About your other points – the West and the US in particular are not fair in their treatment of Palestine and the Arab world, but this is not justification for the Muslim response. Islam is oppressive, foul and violent in itself. Christianity has been so in the past, and all religions today have their violent, oppressive, fundamentalist factions, but it seems to be a plain fact that Islam is right now the worst offender.
As for your hypothetical question, any answer would only be conjecture, and would in any case be irrelevant to the discussion. Just as the Palestinian question is irrelevant. I’m mostly on the side of the Palestinians, but firmly against Islam.
wht ? the palestinians/muslims took that place by war from the earlier jews/christians rt? .. so how is it wrong to take it back from them by the same violence?why is ur “sickular” history always starting from islam , wht abt wht happened before that , does islam void all that for u?
A most entertaining, intelligent and informative blog…
nitwitnastik sums things up nicely in commending your bravery for not publishing under a pseudonym – for me, that in itself indicates why we should be concerned about the spread of Islam.
I’ve put you on my blogroll in the hope that others will find you as interesting as I have…
Hi Rohit!
I’ve been reading your well thought and articulated comments on Nitwit’s blog, but since, couldn’t reach your blog by simply, clicking on your blog’s name there, thought you didn’t have one!
Am very glad to have found it now as a matter of ’serendipity’.
I don’t write exclusively on atheism, but most of my posts do involve attempts at honest introspection and establishing cause-and-effect relationships, which I think are fundamental to reject most of the nonmaterialistic claims of various religions. And well for materialistic claims, we do have science
I’ve just gone through your front page, and am very impressed with its organization.
More on your other posts.
Take care.
Would you like to blog with me?
Dear Rohit,
Your insight into world and Islamic affairs is highly valued. I encourage you to continue producing “mind droppings.” There is much to discuss.
Best wishes
maidak needs to become informed about the incredible amount of support the murderous Palestinians receive from the US.
We provide them with training and dollars. Check it out maildak. No shortage of tax dollars going to help them.
Oh please – give me a break. “murderous” palistinians? more like resistance fighters, who like churchill said are brave enough to say: we will never surrender. it takes a lot of guts to fight with your own bodies – would you do it? I surely would not. How sad, that most people in the US hate them so much.
I am an Indian Hindu, and I only wish we had so much guts to do what the Palistinians are doing against Israel. No, we were sheeps and allowed the British to mow us down willy-nilly, thinking its our karma and we’ll get rewarded in our next life.
What could the Native Americans have done against European invaders and their superior firepower? What could the Indians/Pakistanis have done against superior British firepower. The brave Palistinians are living proof that can you stand up to an injustice and that there is nobility in going down fighting.
Israeli jews have learnt well from nazis, too bad they don’t look in the mirror and see what they have become. I don’t have much sympathy for muslims, and don’t hold their close-minded religion in high regard. But in this case, lets call a spade a spade – US is the ultimate bully for creating an artificial country of foreigners out of nowhere and funding it billions of dollars in aid every year, and f*ing up the local population.