.....IN TODAY'S SHARING AT PVAF OF TRUE- LIFE-KNOWLEDGE SHARING FOR A HAPPIER TOMORROW SIMPLY BECAUSE ONE HAS MORE TRUE-LIFE-KNOWLEDGE THAN TODAY.... ...KNOW THE ONE UNKNOWN FROM HISTORY r /> WHOSE VISION ON HARMONIOUS CO-EXISTANCE THROUGH LIVING LIFESTYLE OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE ... ....COULD HAVE SAVED TODAY'S HUMANITY FROM LIKES OF HITLER, STALIN AND OSAMA bin LADEN...   ISLAM'S MAHATMA GANDHI: .....a pashtun political and spiritual leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan.... ......also known as "Frontier Gandhi" and "Baad shah (King) Khan" Wikipediaa> MEMORIES OF ABDUL GAFFAR KHAN JOINING "QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT" WITH MAHATMA GANDHI IN 1940'S TO START THE END OF WORLD-WIDE BRITISH COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM in India known as British Raaj...... IrshadManjiCom ....Abdul ffar Khan communing with Mahatma Gandhi circa 1940's.. both dressed and exuding the essence of humanity's struggle for freedom to co-exist independently as humans with basic human rights granted by the Creator of human existence...the human struggle for democratic existence which still continues today as seen in the Arab Spring of 2011, the collapse of Soviet Union in 1989, the ending of World War 1 and 2, China's current and continuing reformation into world's third largest economy and European Union's social and economic trials and tribulations....    Wikipedia Ghaffar Khan walking with Jawaharlal Nehru seen after the Cabinet Mission in New Delhi in 1946 for Indian demand for British to Quit India ....and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, , another fellow Indian  freedom fighter against elimination of colonialist and imperialist British Raj is seen in the the then rikshaw pulled and guarded by the suffering Indian citizens in the brutal British Raj Wikipediaa> Abdul Gaffar Khan with Gandhi at a Quit India Movement  rally in Peshawar, British India in 1947 Wikipedia ......Muslim Abdul Gaffar Khan with Hindu Mahatma Gandhi offering prayers at a Quit India Movement  rally.... ...THE STORY OF HUMAN GREATENESS OF ABDUL GHAFFAR KHAN..... Wikipedia Bacha Khan (Abdul Gaffar Khan) leads a march from Peshawar to Kabul during the Khilafat Movement. Peshawar Street 1920 (Mela Ram & Sons). The Khilafat movement (1919–1924) was a pan-Islamic, political campaign launched by Muslims in British India to influence the British government and to protect the Ottoman Empire during the aftermath of World War I. The position of Caliph after the Armistice of Mudros of October 1918 with the military occupation of Istanbul and Treaty of Versailles (1919) fell into a disambiguation along with the Ottoman Empire's existence. The movement gained force after the Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920) which solidified the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. In India, although mainly a Muslim religious movement, the movement became a part of the wider Indian independence movement. The movement was a topic in Conference of London (February 1920). (From Irshad Manji, a 21st Century Woman Islam Activist/Refromist from her  Website): My (Isrshad  Manji) new book, "Allah, Liberty and Love", includes the story of Islam’s Gandhi. Did you know that such a person even existed? Most people have no clue. So let me whet your appetite to read further. This is the story of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He was a Muslim reformer from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan — the area now overrun by the Taliban. But it didn't have to come to this: Ghaffar Khan mobilized a 100,000-member nonviolent “Army of God.” They engaged in public service, defended women’s equality and fought for Muslim-Hindu unity. And they did this while battling British imperialists and Muslim clerics, all of whom had a stake in the status quo. Mahatma Gandhi himself befriended Ghaffar Khan, praising him as a “universalist.” The story of Ghaffar Khan is a tool that Muslim reformists and our non-Muslim allies can use to defang the jihadists. Click on the name to buy "Allah, Liberty and Love".   (From Internet Free Encyclopedia: Wikipedia): Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890 - 20 January 1988)  was a Pashtun political and spiritual leader known for his non-violent opposition to British Rule in India. A lifelong pacifist, a devout Muslim, and a close friend of Mohandas Gandhi, he was also known as Badshah Khan (also Bacha Khan, Pashto: lit., "King Khan") and Sarhaddi Gandhi (Urdu, Hindi lit., "Frontier Gandhi"). He was initially encouraged by his family to join the British Indian Army; however the treatment of a British Raj officer towards a native offended him, and a family decision for him to study in England was put off after his mother's intervention. Having witnessed the repeated failure of revolts against the British Raj, he decided social activism and reform would be more beneficial for Pashtuns. This ultimately led to the formation of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement (Servants of God). The movement's success triggered a harsh crackdown against him and his supporters and he was sent into exile. It was at this stage in the late 1920s that he formed an alliance with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. This alliance was to last till the 1947 partition of India. Ghaffar Khan strongly opposed the Muslim League's demand for the partition of India.[2][3] When the Indian National Congress accepted the partition plan, he told them "You have thrown us to the wolves." After partition, Ghaffar Khan was frequently arrested by the Pakistani government in part because of his association with India and his opposition to authoritarian moves by the government. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s either in jail or in exile. In 1985 he was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. In 1987 he became the first person not holding the citizenship of India to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. Upon his death in 1988, he was buried in Jalalabad, despite the heavy fighting at the time, both sides in the Afghan war declared a ceasefire to allow his burial. Please click here to continue knowing on a personal basis the life-travel of Abdul Gaffar Khan...whose simple humanity-based inspirational lifestyle has a potential to help the current humanity to live harmonious existence in the infinite human diversity of race, form, colour, religion, culture and dynamically evolving daily lifestyle with the continual evolution of human knowledge of life-sciences which will lead humanity not only to understand its diversity but also to understand the Creator of life itself which is One for the entire humanity....      As is the norm at PVAF...todays publishing of the historical Life-Knowledge in the form of a human life-travel of Abdul Gaffar Khan and many of his contemporary of similar human values .....teaching the current humanity the fundamental democratic way of life is not only superiour but outweighs by zillions the blinder-worn-ignorance-based lifestyle of a few lost human souls through out history at a huge cost of human lives and wealth and progress to prosperity of every aspect of humanity from individual human rights to equality of male-female existence to sharing through harmonious and equality-based co-existence of all human needs, wants and desires....please click on the next line to read the Canadian Globe and Mail contributory news item which lead to today's Life-Knowledge sharing....also as is the new norm at PVAF please follow the hyperlinked words in today's sharing to enrich and advance your life-knowledge base to the extent that suits your life-style and life-travel purpose today and tomorrow....       ......continue enjoying THE LOST/FORGOTTEN HISTORICAL ANECDOTAL STORY of inspiring courage of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his family lineage including his sister  in the human-ignorance-based misundersting-based conflicts of fundamental human rights issues of 21st Century....   AFAFP/Ghetty Images: Globe and Mail Abul Gaffar Khan photographed with Mahatma Gandhi at a political rally in Peshawar (then in British India) in 1938. The contagious courage of Abdul Ghaffar Khan strong> (From: Canadian Globe and Mail: F Friday, June 03, 2011: Book Review:  Excerpted from "Allah, Liberty & Love, by Irshad Manji, with permission from Random House Canada. Irshad Manji is a Globe and Mail columnist and the director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University.  Irshad Manji: E-mail Irshad Manji, winner of Oprah’s first Chutzpah Award, is a professor of leadership at New York University. There, she directs the Moral Courage Project, teaching young leaders to speak truth to power within their communities for a greater good. The MCP has grown out of Irshad’s own efforts to promote reform among her fellow Muslims. She is author of the No. 1 Canadian bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change, now published in 31 languages. In countries that have banned her book, Irshad is reaching readers by posting free translations on her website. The Arabic, Urdu and Farsi editions have been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. Irshad’s Emmy-nominated film, Faith Without Fear, is also being watched in the Muslim underground worldwide. The New York Times calls her “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” Click on name to visit Irshad Manji’s website: /span> 3 comments Email Print Decrease text size IIncrease text size Since the 2005 London bombings, I've spoken with a number of Muslim men who knew the ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan. Independently of each other, they've emphasized to me that Mr. Khan left his family's moderate mosque for a Saudi-financed surrogate down the road. There, he could examine theology and upend mainstream imams whose feudal traditions ooze the warning: Do as you're told. It must have been galling for him to experience such condescension at his family's mosque. Being treated like an infant didn't quite square with the fact that Mr. Khan and his mates had already taken the initiative to combat drug addiction and crime in their neighbourhood. They baptized themselves the Mullah Boys. These mullahs detested their parents' out-of-touch clerics, whose tribal bent shunned Mr. Khan's brain and almost shattered his heart. He passionately wanted to marry an Indian Muslim from outside his clannish Pakistani community, only to be forbidden by his parents. Islamists – Muslims who treat Islam as a political ideology – grabbed hold of Mr. Khan's grief. They assured him that his family deformed Islam by preventing his nuptials merely because the bride-to-be was culturally unsavoury. On this one, the Islamists spoke truth. Luring the lovesick Mr. Khan to their mosque, they plied him with more reasons to feel humiliated: Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir. Shiv Malik, an investigative journalist, dissected Mr. Khan's radicalization. Mr. Malik concluded that Mr. Khan may have felt indignant about Western foreign policy, but that wasn't the reason he led a cell of young men to kill themselves and 52 London commuters. At the heart of this tragedy is a conflict between the first and subsequent generations of British Pakistanis – with many young people using Islamism as a kind of liberation theology to assert their right to choose how to live. Before hooking up with Islamists, suppose Mohammad Sidique Khan had met Abdul Ghaffar Khan. “Abdul who?” you might ask. Abdul. Ghaffar. Khan. He's sometimes known as Badshah – “the King” – except that he donned no regalia. He built an army of God that performed community service and fought imperialism with the arsenal of non-violence. This tall, strapping and faithful Muslim man deserves to be heralded in his own right, but for our purposes, he is the answer to the question, “Where is Islam's Gandhi?” Ghaffar Khan was a 20th-century Muslim reformer. The son of a middling landowner, he lived in the region known today as Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, an area now teeming with the Taliban. In the years leading up to India's independence in 1947, thousands of his people, the Pathans, reinterpreted honour and Islam. They showed that freedom comes from disciplining the self, not conquering the Other. “One of his first concerns was the role of women,” observes the biographer and peace educator Eknath Easwaran. He “encouraged them to come out from behind the veil, as the women in his own family had done.” Ghaffar Khan's sister often toured the Frontier with him, addressing crowds herself as well as listening to the fiery orations of her brother. He knew his Koran, choosing to publicize those rarely recited passages that give women and men equal responsibilities. He established a school for girls and published a journal, Pushtun, that questioned honour-drenched practices. When the Indian freedom struggle picked up speed, Ghaffar Khan's alliance with Gandhi dovetailed with his countercultural Islam to ensure that Muslim women would be central players. He also recruited about 100,000 men to become the “Khudai Khidmatgars,” or Servants of God: uniformed soldiers who would replace blood feuds with peaceful means to advance home rule for India. The Servants of God promoted Muslim-Hindu unity with moral courage. Gandhi came to view them as such dedicated exemplars of his non-violent vision that he prayed that the “Frontier Pathans may not make only India free, but teach the world.” All this, despite being vilified by fellow Muslims who pressed for a separate homeland – Pakistan – and despite being brutalized by the British, who perceived the Pathans as incapable of rising above their vendettas with each other. However mercenary the British could be, Ghaffar Khan charged, Pathan culture displayed worse “defects.” He singled out the code of honour for pitting family against family, clan against clan, sowing fear in every generation for past humiliations yet to be avenged. Even before he knew of Gandhi, the young Pathan knew his personal task: “to educate, to enlighten, to lift up, to inspire.” Only later did the gust of Gandhi become wind behind Ghaffar Khan's back. With the Mahatma's ideas animating India and vindicating his own, he sensed that the hour for collective introspection had arrived. And it all made exquisite sense until Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi witnessed their dreams of Muslim-Hindu unity unravel. Pakistan, a state for Muslims, would be carved out of India, a Hindu-majority country. The August, 1947, partition presaged yet more communal slaughter – and the worst news of all: in January, 1948, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu nationalist who accused him of being too pro-Muslim. In turn, Ghaffar Khan incurred Muslim wrath for being too pro-Hindu. Pakistan banned the Servants of God, arrested him for sedition and incarcerated him. Over the next four decades, his life amounted to a series of penal sentences. At the age of 95, he protested against martial law in Pakistan, only to be rearrested. He died in January, 1988, in Peshawar, but not before announcing one last fast to stop Muslim-Hindu violence. For me, Ghaffar Khan's aborted legacy is something of a gauntlet. More of us will have to pick it up – and we can do that by becoming part of his proverbial village. His life attests to the fact that behind every agent of moral courage is another whom we don't know about yet. Gandhi's ability to defend Muslim-Hindu harmony would have been bolstered by his tight bond with Ghaffar Khan, who helped feed the Mahatma's moral courage. Likewise, Ghaffar Khan's moral courage took nourishment from a nucleus of other individuals. There were his siblings. There were the Hindu, Christian and Muslim leaders of Indian independence who, jailed with him, interpreted each other's holy texts for an evolving, pluralistic nation. Above all, there was his father, Behram Khan, who sent his sons away for a British-run education in Peshawar despite the mullahs' mantra that “those who learn in schools are none but money's tools. In heaven they will never dwell; they will surely go to hell.” It's not as if Behram Khan invited them to go to hell. Instead, writes Easwaran, he “was known throughout the district for a most un-Pathan-like quality: forgiveness.” Over and over, he “chose to forgive rather than seek revenge – a decision that must have deeply influenced the character and career of his youngest son.” These connections suggest that moral courage doesn't have to be the herculean act of one person toiling in isolation. Counterintuitive as it sounds, individuality takes a village. For the individual to leave a legacy that a new generation can build on, a network of people needs to get involved. We come full circle to the ringleader of the London bombings. What if someone had told an increasingly agitated Mohammad Sidique Khan about Abdul Ghaffar Khan? That Ghaffar Khan had battled British policy, but did so by mobilizing the best in his fellow Muslims? That he would have even welcomed Mohammad Sidique Khan's intercultural marriage? Would this story have persuaded the British lad to rebuff the Islamists? r /> We can only know that it would have been worth the try.   and now to understatand the genesis of today's human fundamental freedom and rights aspect of the story continue reading about formulation in 1920's of "Khudai Khidmatgar" (sERVANTS OF gOD) A HUMAN MIND-TOOL CREATED IN ISLAM BY r /> ABDUL GAFFAR KHAN FROM THE GANDHIAN LIFESTYLE CONCEPT OF NON-VIOLENT AND HARMONIOUS CO-EXISTENCE  RESPECTING ALL FORMS OF DIVERSITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE which is ever dynamic in search of human prosperity of freedom to live to one's lifestyle choices without hurting-interfering with lifestyle choices of fellow humans.... .....and without which the surety of human destruction and possible annihilation doomsday scenario is assured... . WWikipedia In time, Ghaffar Khan's goal came to be the formulation of a united, independent, secular India. To achieve this end, he founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God"), commonly known as the "Red Shirts" (Surkh Posh), during the 1920s.p> ThThe Khudai Khidmatgar was founded on a belief in the power of Gandhi's notion of Satyagrahaa>, a form of active non-violence as captured in an oath. He told its members: "I am going to give you such a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it." ThThe organization recruited over 100,000 members and became legendary in opposing (and dying at the hands of) the British-controlled police and army. Through strikes, political organisation and non-violent opposition, the Khudai Khidmatgar were able to achieve some success and came to dominate the politics of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. His brother, Dr. Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (known as Dr. Khan Sahib), led the political wing of the movement, and was the Chief Minister of the province (from the late 1920s until 1947 when his government was dismissed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League). Please click here to keep on reading more about Khudai Khidmatgar..... There are 0 additional comments.   Send your news items to be posted to news@prajapati-samaj.ca.