Age of madness

[muse]

It is this culture that is considered shirk by the fundamentalist militants who preach a radical and bloody streak of Wahabi Islam. Previously this was thought of as a battle between the Wahabi militants who have infiltrated the region with their imported brand of jihadi Islam and the Barelvi sect that goes to shrines and believes in saints. However, the culture and traditions of Sufi shrines are not confined to one or the other sect. As a matter of fact, throughout the Subcontinent, the inclusive and tolerant message of the Sufi saints is what helped the spread of Islam and even now attracts all sects, even non-Muslims to its embrace. This culture and these traditions represent the greatest obstacle to the extremists’ imposition by force of their narrow, literalist and purist interpretations of religion. Hence the campaign of bombing shrines that has afflicted Pakistan since the jihadis decided four years ago to turn on their mentors and Pakistani society generally.

For years Pakistani policy makers have enthusiastically allowed themselves to be co-opted by first, Jamaati totalitarianism and then combined with US dollars, with the Wahabi and Pakistan has tried to export this malice disguised as Islam, today, many, with much satisfaction, say, that Pakistan does not deserve a break, after all, Pakistan thought "Islam" is good for her neighbors, now Pakistan can get a nice good taste of "islam" and see how she likes it

Well, that's not too hard to understand but for concerned Pakistanis, it's also not the main point of concern, for them the main point is to cleanse those institutions that will be required to take on the Wahabi militants - because while concerned Pakistanis want these wahabi militants dealt with, others, some uniformed, are conspiring to destroy what remains of Pakistan - and with that destruction what remains of "ijtihadi Islam" which Javed Iqbal says was the foundation of Pakistan, finally after a long and successful struggle, "Napakistan" will have been turned to dust

 

[RabzonKhan]

The elephant in our midst

By Khurram Husain
Published in The Express Tribune, April 7th, 2011.

All day long the elephant sat in the middle of the room, stared at us and blinked. The room was filled with some of the biggest businessmen in the country, CEOs of companies with widely ranging stakes, from oil and gas, to banking. Eminent educationists, famous economists and even a spattering or two from the world of NGOs; and the odd media personality mingled, argued, spoke, presented and shared experiences in a day-long exercise with one central purpose: To develop a plan of action to fix Pakistan’s economy.

There were presentations on upstream gas pricing and further integration of gas transmission networks of the northern and southern distribution companies. There was nearly, and I emphasise nearly, universal acceptance of the idea that the state cannot, must not and should never be allowed to abdicate its responsibility to make quality education available to every citizen. There were many useful ideas on what can be done to make progress towards this goal.

The elephant didn’t care about any of them. It just sat there, stared and blinked through it all.

A group spoke on what will be needed to bring about some semblance of macroeconomic stability, a group that included two former State Bank governors and a redoubtable wizard of tax and revenue matters. The proposals included concrete steps for the immediate term, and more abstract suggestions for the longer term. Another group spoke on social protection, betraying some debate within the group over the role of the state in providing safety nets to the most vulnerable groups.

The elephant didn’t follow any of these debates. It didn’t care. It just stared and blinked.

The elephant sitting impassively in our midst was the war. And it was impossible to miss how every proposal was, in fact, connected to the war and its fallout.

An agenda for economic renewal is no secret and has been well-known for decades. Some conversation can be had around how best to implement it under present circumstances, but 10 years ago, the agenda included broadening the tax base and curtailing wasteful expenditures; and today, these priorities remain. Likewise, with the agenda for education and regional trade. The priorities are the same today, as they’ve ever been.

The problem is getting the message through the din and chaos and fog of war. The war has created so much confusion and warped our priorities, so that an agenda for economic renewal reads like a laundry list of mundane items. Who sees the urgency in our worsening fuel mix for power generation, when we have drones and Raymond Davis types running around our country? Who wants to hear about remittances and exports and external accounts when we have the Kerry-Lugar Bill to bash in the name of ‘honour’?

The war has bred in us the idea that our economic problems are for others to solve, hence our gritty and determined wait for external help to arrive and resolve our budgetary issues. The war has cut us off from our neighbours, making us the most regionally isolated country in the world, next to a few pariahs such as North Korea. In a world where regional trade flows dominate, our trade with our neighbours is negligible, except for smuggling, leaving us bottled up behind a small and ever-diminishing production possibilities frontier. The war’s requirements of manpower and cannon fodder have given rise to a well-oiled madrassa system of education that continues to grow, while our public schools languish and their curriculum sees the influx of hate-filled propaganda, eerie silences and bizarre invocations of supernatural phenomena in science textbooks.

With the war in our midst, the biggest task for any economic manager is to try and find a way to speak above the din. The elephant in our midst, the war, doesn’t care about the grass it tramples on, doesn’t know anything about foregone possibilities, cannot comprehend the consequences of the brush fires of confusion, that keep breaking out in the country. It only wants to eat, and it’s our prosperity and hope that it feeds on. Any successful economic manager will need to find a way to convey this to the people.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Our search for a forgotten identity

The News
Kamila Hyat
April 14, 2011

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

Why is Pakistan’s national anthem mainly in Persian, with a few words borrowed from Arabic? After all, hardly anyone in the country speaks these languages.

Linguists who have studied the dense phraseology of the anthem believe only the word ‘ka’ comes from Urdu. Generations of baffled school-children, singing out the words each morning, wonder what they could possibly mean - and in Balochistan nationalists argue it is pointless to sing a song no one understands anyway. At some schools the exercise has - controversially - been abandoned.

The main point however is not the language of the anthem - though it would be quite nice to have one we could easily understand - but what it says about our identity as a nation. We need to ask also precisely what constitutes nationhood and if we possess these qualities today.

To do so we need to glance back into history, towards events in the not very distant past. During its 63 years in existence, Pakistan has seen more than one civil war. The one fought in East Pakistan in 1970 resulted in the breaking away of one half of the country.

Ironically enough, despite the sniggering and racist jeers directed at the time towards the new nation and predictions that it would not survive, it has done better in social and economic terms than the former western wing that comprises the Pakistan of today.

Failure to do more to discuss this chapter in our history, educate younger generations about the course of events and correct the perceptions of people who lived through the war and the bitterness that preceded it have added to our issues with identity and confusion as to what it is that it consists of.

We have also experienced repeated insurgency in Balochistan with discontent continuing to trigger violence in that province. Only the miniscule size of the population of the territory prevents the struggle to assert independence from succeeding. Nationalist feelings run high in other areas too and raise questions as to whether our state is based around a commonality of religion or other factors. This has indeed been a matter of dispute since the inception of Pakistan.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s philosophy was abandoned over the decades that followed - and we live today in a country where the language a person speaks, or their ethnicity determined in other ways, can be enough to lead to their death. Murders on this basis take place regularly in Karachi and in Balochistan. The role played by some political parties or other organisations adds to the tensions.

There has even been doubt as to where we are located on the globe. Notably under the late General Ziaul Haq an attempt was made to transport ourselves from South Asia to the Middle East. School-books depicted children clad in the ‘thobes’ and ‘keffiyeh’ typical of Saudi Arabia as being ‘brave’ and ‘trustworthy’.

Far less favourable qualities were reserved for Hindus, and the suggestion seemed to be that we should somehow transform ourselves into Arabs abandoning the ties built over centuries to a uniquely sub-continental heritage and culture.

Many of the problems we face today arose from this attempt to pull a different part of the world a little closer, with the orthodox religious schools of thought rooted in Saudi Arabia encouraged to take up residence here. The result is the advent of the Taliban and all kinds of other mayhem, including the blasts that have, notably since 2007, killed hundreds at shrines across the country, adding a new dimension to the violence we face and dividing society into smaller and smaller fragments.

Even now, the effort to pull back into South Asia is thwarted again and again by hawks who oppose ending animosity with India. There is limited recognition of the fact that this may be our only means of salvation offering a thin rope which, if we can gain a grip on it, may help us escape the curse of extremism and the havoc it continues to play.

There has been conjecture that the 2008 attacks in Mumbai may have been an attempt to prevent just such a bond from being built - and the language of hate continues to be spread through the country and imparted to new generations who deserve to grow up without the legacy of such bias.

On smaller scales too, there is chaos over identity. In Punjab, tens of thousands of parents, according to the last census in 1998, opt not to speak the language with their children. It is not taught formally at most schools and courses have been dropped from colleges because of a lack of student interest.

As part of the continuous war over identity, Urdu has been depicted as being somehow superior and standing higher on the lingual hierarchy as a language that is more ‘refined’. English stands higher still, and in many ways carves out a tiny minority as a group separated from the masses and commanding social status that casts them in the role of masters.

The divisions that exist, the question of identity and the problems that arise from it stem in many ways from the efforts to enforce uniformity rather than embrace diversity and build respect for all the sub-sets of people who live within the country. The questions over the events of 1947, the reasons why Pakistan was created and what precisely was gained in the process still need to be fully explored.

We still do not seem to know who we are, and have attempted to cover up this inadequacy by building within ourselves a fervent, but unauthentic patriotism that revolves around blaming conspiracies of all kinds for our many misfortunes, painting our faces green and white ahead of cricket contests with India as part of a high-pitched frenzy that masquerades as devotion to our nation and, on special occasions, belting out our enigmatic anthem in a language that is not spoken by anyone in the country.

 

[clmeta]

Age of madness

ZAHOOR'S CARTOON.

Excellent cartoon. Superb. Very thought provoking

 

[RabzonKhan]

Our textbooks and the lies they teach

By Raza Rumi
The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2011.


Due to the 18th Amendment, a momentous shift in Pakistan’s governance arrangements is taking place through a politically mediated and largely consensual manner. The federal government is being trimmed and 10 ministries have already been devolved to the provinces. A key development pertains to the devolution of education — lock, stock and barrel — to the provinces. Most notably, the odious era of setting poisonous, centralised curricula in the name of a ‘martial’ nationalism is finally over. Whether the past practices of turning Pakistan into a jihad project will end is uncertain, unless the provinces take the initiative and reverse the regrettable trajectory of the past.

Pakistani textbooks have preached falsehoods, hatred and bigotry. They have constructed most non-Muslims, especially Hindus, as evil and primordial enemies, glorified military dictatorships and omitted references to our great betrayal of the Bengali brothers and sisters who were the founders and owners of the Pakistan movement. It is time to correct these wrongs.

However, this shift will be daunting for many reasons. The provinces are not well-prepared and would need to build capacities at their end. Similarly, generations of pseudo-historians, inspired by state narratives, exist who are willing to perpetuate the culture of weaving lies. Other than the ideological issues, bureaucratic slovenliness has also marred past performance. While the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa textbook boards have been updating curricula, those in Sindh and Balochistan have not done so for nearly a decade.

So it is heartening to note that the Sindh government has finally made some headway now on the issue. The education department is working to update and align textbooks with the 2006 guidelines agreed to by all provinces. In addition, efforts are underway with the expertise of civil society to introduce critical modes of teaching, with supplementary learning material for both teachers and students.

The Sindh education department and the textbook board under the 2006 policy will be following a transparent process, inviting private publishers to submit books for subjects such as English, Mathematics, General Knowledge and Social Studies. For the first time, private publishers will be submitting transcripts for approval. The draft textbooks will then be reviewed by a committee comprising government and private experts and will finally be published in time for the April 2012 academic year.

What are the chances of this brilliant idea being implemented? Despite the odds, there is a strong likelihood that it may work. Largely, because the ruling coalition has an agreement over this issue and the 18th Amendment give full powers to the province. It is critical that other provinces also take note of Sindh’s initiative and set up similar reform committees.

Extremism in Pakistan has grown beyond belief and radicalisation of the young minds is a great challenge for Pakistan’s future. The provinces need to move quickly and undo the wrong committed by central authorities in the past.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Smokers’ Corner: Manic manoeuvres

Dawn
Nadeem F. Paracha
April 17 2011

So much is said and written about Islamophobia. It’s a tendency found in some non-Muslims, especially in the West, who question and discriminate against ‘Muslim attire’ (whatever that means) and beliefs. But those who speak the loudest against Islamophobia have little or nothing to say on another social illness that is haunting their own societies: extremism, and an obsessive-compulsive urge to drag religion into everything.

An unhealthy obsession with religion is used to not only inflict bodily harm on those considered infidels or bad Muslims, but also as an excuse to rob, lie, cheat and attempt to maintain a false moral ground and dominance over those considered flawed and inferior. It is also used to describe one’s own professional, social and political shortcomings as something that is due to the intrigues of those who are against Muslims.

This kind of mania constitutes a myopic fixation on preaching, and is found among the generic maulvis, those belonging to large outfits like the Tableeghi Jamat and Dawat-i-Islami, an ever-growing number of televangelists, and all the way to those who just can’t help but roll out numerous emails and text messages on the subject on a daily basis. Growing up in an era in which the whole post-18th century myth about Islam being in danger has reached a new, unprecedented peak, many Pakistanis’ fixation with religion has at times seen this obsession turn into a rather disruptive condition. It sees even the most educated men and women suddenly become allergic to some obvious truths about what we as a nation and polity have ended up doing in the name of faith and morality. We will wail, moan and whine about Islamophobia in the West, but keep mum about the discrimination and hatred that takes place among Muslims against other religions and even amongst themselves, one sect against the other.

Our mania has generated a childlike stubbornness in which all avenues of reason and rationality are purposefully blocked. By doing this we are convinced that we are supposedly defending our faith, even if this means becoming apologists and defenders of the most destructive and inhuman expressions of extremism, an extremism of our own making.

This mania also includes wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeves, as if, otherwise, God won’t be able to judge our religiosity. Take the recent example of the way many Pakistanis reacted to the niqab ban in France. Some women who use burqa or hijab say they feel liberated. In our media we hear their voices loud and clear, but never of the other side who suggests that a woman who observes hijab/ burqa/ niqab may as well be submitting to the historical tribal, male-driven tradition of claiming control over women.

Various Muslim women authors and thinkers believe that the observance of veil remains a dictate of Muslim men. They say that the practice is an outcome of laws and social mores constructed over the last many centuries by judges, ulema and lawmakers who were all men. Scholars like Javed Ghamdi, Ziauddin Sardar and Muhammad Arkhun, believe that Muslim women enjoyed greater autonomy in public and private life during the time of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) — an autonomy that later Muslim rulers and ulema took away.

Muslim women who do not use the veil are right to demand that if some of their sisters in France are so agitated by the veil ban, then they should be equally agitated by the forced veiling practised in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s only fair, if this really is a matter of the freedom of expression.

While we busy ourselves in discussing the niqab issue in France (where only the niqab or the covering of the face is banned, hijab is not), bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the niqab, we conveniently forget that in many Muslim countries women who believe that modesty is a state of mind and can be demonstrated without veiling are coming under increasing pressure.

My only hope is that we now allow ourselves the necessity to hold open debates about issues that till now we have cowardly avoided and in the process let them grow into political and social ogres of intolerance and myopia. It should also be noted that whenever we do let such debates take place in public, counter-arguments to the traditionalist ones too are given a platform and are accepted — not as thoughts coming from ‘misguided minds’ or wayward souls, but from those who are equally concerned about their country and society.

 

[muse]

My only hope is that we now allow ourselves the necessity to hold open debates about issues that till now we have cowardly avoided and in the process let them grow into political and social ogres of intolerance and myopia. It should also be noted that whenever we do let such debates take place in public, counter-arguments to the traditionalist ones too are given a platform and are accepted — not as thoughts coming from ‘misguided minds’ or wayward souls, but from those who are equally concerned about their country and society.

Amen to that -- BUT, how likely is that to happen, no really? How likely?

Truth about this issue is that unless you make it clear to the "arbi-toxified" that you will answer violence with greater violence, you can forget about the "equally" concerned bit -- So is violence the way to go? When dealing with the arbi-toxified it is absolutely vital, it's mothers milk to them.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Children of Zia

Dawn
by Nabiha Meher
April 29th, 2011

In elite academic institutions, we often make a knee-jerk and erroneous assumption that we are not responsible for the intolerance that now permeates our land. It is easy to blame the non-English speaking public sector and madrassas. We like to believe that we are not responsible for the fact that today, according to Ayesha Siddiqa, 56 per cent of elite youth do not want a secular state. We like to believe that we are not active agents, but are we?

Very few across Pakistan, elite or not, teach critical thinking which is absolutely essential and should be compulsory from an early age. Without the ability to think, education starts to resemble indoctrination. And in a country like ours, where schools have no option but to teach state-sanctioned propaganda under the guise of Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat, which aims to indoctrinate with a linear vision, this becomes even more necessary. One is not allowed to challenge the syllabus and is expected to regurgitate a single perspective – the chosen perspective. If you don’t, you fail and that is not an option most are willing to take. This sends a clear message: difference and diversity will not be tolerated.

We need to stop, pause and think about our current situation. Isn’t this just a logical outcome of these students having been taught NOT to challenge alternative perspectives, and blindly believe what their teachers and texts tell them? Indeed there are many who fail critical thinking courses because they stubbornly decided that what we, the liberal teachers, are doing is part of the grand Hindu-Zionist-CIA conspiracy just because we are presenting them with alternative perspectives and asking them to be sensitive to other views. They are, after all, a product of the society they live in and most do not have a living memory of the world before September 11.

What personally depresses me the most is that once the class is over, many choose to go back to their linear vision even though they know they are speaking in fallacies. Some even say, outright, “I choose not to think about any other perspectives because they challenge my worldview.” There are many reasons for this since they return to a culture which has a tunnel vision.

Most of my on-going research is based on extensive interviews with students in elite institutions who are outside the (state-sanctioned) political and religious norm today. Intolerance in academic institutions is growing at a visibly rapid pace. Because teachers are self-censoring out of fear, students are not being properly educated and many of them know it. They fear being fired and being viciously (mostly verbally) attacked by their students like some have been many times in the past. Teachers are afraid to use the word ‘Darwin’ or even dare admit that they believe in evolution instead of creationism in medical schools! Many refuse to bring up religion or politics in critical thinking classes, which defies the senses for critical thinking relies on challenging people’s deeply rooted, deeply ingrained perspectives. We live in a country where religion and politics is in the air we breathe. It must be acknowledged and it must be challenged.

When it comes to students, many say that they are also self censoring their comments now more than ever. They also feel that the students belonging to the religious right are a much bigger problem for them than the teachers. Many of them have been attacked, mostly by fellow students, for voicing their secular opinions or for presenting any other perspectives. For example, a student, let’s call him X, who openly said that Mumtaz Qadri is a murderer was verbally attacked and called a “liberal extremist.” This is despite the fact that he actually tried to reason with his opponent, explaining that Taseer was not an “infidel” but someone who just wanted justice. X used to openly voice his perspective until recently. Now he’s a bit wary and he’s not the only one.

Similarly, those who say that Ahmadis are Muslims and should NOT be killed also get attacked. I have witnessed students say that they would like to personally behead Ahmadis. I’ve heard them say this out loud in a class with Ahmadi students who are, more often than not, hiding their religious affiliation from the others. I’ve also heard rants against Hindus while a Hindu student has been sitting in the room. That is how shameless we have become.

Students also talk about “the look” they get from other students who blindly believe in the religious right rhetoric. “The look” is a stare so deep, so uncomfortable, that it silences and scares them. They know that these students will later cause problems for them. These very same students bang on people’s door for fajr namaz, demanding they say all their prayers at the mosque, which they then regulate.

In hostels there are students who don’t let other students play “haraam” music or constantly preach to them, dousing them with unwanted and unwarranted advice on how they should live their lives. Once a student was accosted in the middle of his campus by a religious student who told him that he should stop hanging around with girls. He had never met this student, who was junior to him, before. He is now scared, since there seems to be a sort of watchdog spy network amongst these students who are not at all afraid to intimidate and attack.

None of this is new of course, but the level of intolerance is higher and leading to more and more violence than it ever did before.

Education should aid evolution, but our students are going downhill. This is our reality but I will maintain that we are also to blame. By putting up with this and allowing students to intimidate as well as regulate others, we are guilty of perpetuating an intolerant culture. We should not be tolerant of the intolerant. By putting profit above quality and by not teaching critical thinking from an early age, we are a part of the problem. What we are breeding is an even more dangerous form of terrorist than the ignorant, brainwashed madrassa students who do not know any better. They were never taught to think unlike those who choose not to and continue to believe in conspiracies, which are trendy and perpetuated by celebrities like Ali Azmat. It is shocking when it comes from a well-dressed, articulate student in a suit attending the top business school in the country; one whose aim in life is to then move abroad, work for a multi-national that he is currently dismissing as an evil Zionist company. I wonder how many future Faisal Shahzads and Dr Aafias are out there. They were the result of an earlier, more tolerant generation. Now, we are witnessing the children of Zia in their full glory and splendour. Something has to be done and something has to be done now.

Nabiha Meher is a writer, a feminist and an unapologetic, outspoken eccentric who blogs at “I am woman, hear me roar”.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Absurd, dangerous interviews


By Kamran Shafi
The Express Tribune, August 31st, 2012

The writer is a columnist, a former major of the Pakistan Army and served as press secretary to Benazir Bhutto.

The last 15 days saw three quite ludicrous, dangerous interviews aired on our TV channels, two of them on fake ‘Dr’ Amir Liaquat’s show, one with Imran Khan and the other with the so-called only-father-of-our-bums Dr AQ Khan. The third was on ARY in which Kashif Abbasi interviewed General Hamid Gul, self-same Imran Khan’s mentor and guide.

First the ‘Dr’ Amir Liaquat: This was an exercise in mutual admiration with the ‘Dr’ toadying up to and fawning on Imran and Imran waxing lyrical about how he not only won the World Cup but also beat India in India and England in England. It was always ‘Mein ney’ as if the team was made up of just himself and not eleven players, all of who surely had a hand in winning the matches.

His party’s General Secretary, Dr Arif Alvi, went one better and told us how Imran manages his household on Rs50,000 a month that he gets from a newspaper for writing an article every month: keeping three servants and himself and his dogs in good fettle with this money. Mayhap he can share the secret of how he manages, raising home economics to an art form. Of course, Dr Alvi did not tell us who runs the party and who pays for the jalsas; the stage; the chairs; the generators and lights and sound system and music and flags, flags, flags and all.

But back to the ‘Dr’, who is that same person after whose programme, “Aalim Online”, two innocent Pakistanis were killed in Sindh: Dr Abdul Mannan Siddiqui in Mirpurkhas on Sept 8, 2008, and on Sept 9, Seth Yousuf in Nawabshah.

Now this is the person on whose programme Imran Khan not only appeared but on which Dr Alvi issued a clarion call to the quite hateful ‘Dr’ Amir Liaquat to join the PTI. I have to add that Imran Khan immediately echoed Alvi and also invited the man to join. Oh well.

On August 14, 2012, Dr AQ Khan, who exposed Pakistan to the opprobrium of the world by admitting on television that he was responsible for peddling nuclear know-how to several countries and who just very recently also accused a former Chief of Army Staff and another general of accepting bribes from North Korea through himself, also appeared on the ‘Dr’s’ show.

Let us leave his other ramblings aside about how there were saints in his hometown, Bhopal, who could transport a person to Madina and then bring him right back to Bhopal after he had said his prayers by merely placing their hands on the person’s shoulder. Let us straightaway go to his peddling hate. Dr AQ Khan also told us that Bhopal was famous for two other attributes. That it neither produced any traitors nor any Ahmadis. I ask you. And this on August 14!

If this is not hate speech that could also be used by the crazies to do harm to Ahmadi Pakistanis, what is? The Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to determine what is, and what is not vulgarity on television. Is this hate speech of AQ Khan’s not the height of vulgarity, My Lords? Is his going public against a community that has done so much for Pakistan, who are proud Pakistanis albeit a minority, not utter vulgarity and worse? Even offensiveness and impropriety which are also other meanings of the word? Will you take suo motu action on this My Lords?

And now to ARY where Kashif Abbasi interviewed our great ******, my friend General Hamid Gul. For the very first time I saw the general flustered; angry; frustrated and rattled by the probing questions put to him by the interviewer. Completely flummoxed, so to say, one minute saying, “Generals love the country” (as if the rest of us don’t!) and then criticising army takeovers as being destructive; to once again saying if the army doesn’t look after the country who else will?


He put his foot in it several times, one moment saying the generals were suspicious of the Peoples Party being anti-Pakistan (or words to that effect) the next that Benazir was a patriot. And then letting slip that whilst they were suspicious of her and set up the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) to counter her, ‘she fell in line’ soon enough.

Oh, and yes, the Americans blew up Ojhri Camp! I mean, the gall! If the Americans were running around blowing up the highly sensitive and heavily-guarded Ojhri Camp which was not only a weapons dump but which received truckloads of hundreds of millions of $s that came in kit bags and sacks on C-130s and C-141 Star-lifters, what the hell was his own ISI, the Mother of All Agencies, doing?

He loudly went on saying he set up the IJI and challenged any court to summon him and proceed against him! This dovetails neatly into the Pakistan Army’s subsequent foray into politics that is at present being heard by the Supreme Court in Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s case. Would My Lords consider clubbing Hamid Gul’s remarks with that case and proceeding?

He also repeated the canard that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto issued a ‘decree’ ordering a political role for the ISI which is debunked by a study by Professor Shawn Gregory of the University of Bradford in his “The ISI and the War on Terrorism” which I quoted in this space on January 5, 2012. Gregory says it was Ayub Khan who tasked the ISI “to monitor political opposition, and (c) to sustain military rule in Pakistan”.

Indeed, the SC which has asked to see the ZAB ‘decree’ and which no government office can produce including the ISI, could well ask Hamid Gul to provide it a copy. But will it?

Let me end by quoting Omar Khayyam without taking any liberties with him:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,

Lift not thy hands to It for help — for It

Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

 

[RabzonKhan]

When will Rimsha be released?


By Editorial
September 4, 2012

A 12-year-old daughter of Pakistan, Rimsha Masih, is in jail without bail for burning pages of Quranic verses even after the police found she was victimised through a trumped-up charge by a local cleric determined to oust the Christian community from the village of Mehrabad, near Islamabad. She suffers from Downs’s syndrome and may not understand why she is being maltreated. Even after the discovery that the cleric was indulging in a criminal plot against the Christian community, she has not been allowed to return home on bail.

A crowd was organised to oust the Christian community upon appeals from mosque loudspeakers. The mob went to the house of Rimsha and started kicking the door asking the parents to hand her over. They finally entered the house and gave a beating to the little girl and her mother. Following this, the police were informed, who immediately took the girl away and put her in jail under the ‘non-bailable’ black law. The Capital Development Authority has reassured those who were evacuated that they will be returned to their homes and their tormentors will be forced under law to relent. The displaced families were made to move to another place where the local inhabitants refused to let them stay temporarily because they feared ‘incidence of crime due to their presence’.

The shock administered by this case of blasphemy has been felt inside Pakistan. It has deepened the despair the outside world feels about our country; and the Christian Church is once again appealing to do something about a law that, as now proved beyond all doubt, is causing harm to Pakistan and its reputation.

This happened on August 16, on the 27th of Ramazan, thus further raising suspicions as to when Rimsha was put in confinement. A few days ago, even after a witness alerted the authorities that the cleric had cooked up the story of burning the Holy Quran by putting scarred pages in a bag that Rimsha was carrying, the police have still not released her. The judiciary is silent so far but the Supreme Court should take suo-motu notice and get the girl placed in a better environment which her age, her health and her innocence deserve.

What people have always said about the law and are still saying is this: “In blasphemy cases, the state institutions just try to defuse the pressure of accusers by registering a case against the accused”. Both the police and the judiciary take the side of the accuser. During the last two decades or so, more than 1,000 cases of blasphemy have been registered and it is believed that a vast majority of these cases were fake. Not even a single accuser in these fake cases has been convicted, implying that the state patronises the accusers at some level.

Laws are usually made after criminal acts are observed in society. In this case, criminal acts have followed the enforcement of the law. The victimisation follows a familiar pattern. In February 1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony, 12 kilometres east of Khanewal, in Multan division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500 policemen. The police first evacuated the Christian population of 15,000, then helped the raiders use battlefield explosives to blow up their houses and property.

In November 2005, the Christian community of Sangla Hill in Nankana district in Punjab experienced a most hair-raising day of violence and vandalism. Three churches, a missionary-run school, two hostels and several houses belonging to the Christian community were destroyed by an enraged mob of some 3,000 people.

The Supreme Court must act to save Rimsha Masih and, thereafter, declare the blatant misuse and abuse of the blasphemy law against the spirit of Islam and against the ‘grundnorm’ of the Constitution. Or, is it true that like the politicians, the institutions of the state are too scared to act?

 

[Zarvan]

Smokers’ Corner: Manic manoeuvres

Dawn
Nadeem F. Paracha
April 17 2011

So much is said and written about Islamophobia. It’s a tendency found in some non-Muslims, especially in the West, who question and discriminate against ‘Muslim attire’ (whatever that means) and beliefs. But those who speak the loudest against Islamophobia have little or nothing to say on another social illness that is haunting their own societies: extremism, and an obsessive-compulsive urge to drag religion into everything.

An unhealthy obsession with religion is used to not only inflict bodily harm on those considered infidels or bad Muslims, but also as an excuse to rob, lie, cheat and attempt to maintain a false moral ground and dominance over those considered flawed and inferior. It is also used to describe one’s own professional, social and political shortcomings as something that is due to the intrigues of those who are against Muslims.

This kind of mania constitutes a myopic fixation on preaching, and is found among the generic maulvis, those belonging to large outfits like the Tableeghi Jamat and Dawat-i-Islami, an ever-growing number of televangelists, and all the way to those who just can’t help but roll out numerous emails and text messages on the subject on a daily basis. Growing up in an era in which the whole post-18th century myth about Islam being in danger has reached a new, unprecedented peak, many Pakistanis’ fixation with religion has at times seen this obsession turn into a rather disruptive condition. It sees even the most educated men and women suddenly become allergic to some obvious truths about what we as a nation and polity have ended up doing in the name of faith and morality. We will wail, moan and whine about Islamophobia in the West, but keep mum about the discrimination and hatred that takes place among Muslims against other religions and even amongst themselves, one sect against the other.

Our mania has generated a childlike stubbornness in which all avenues of reason and rationality are purposefully blocked. By doing this we are convinced that we are supposedly defending our faith, even if this means becoming apologists and defenders of the most destructive and inhuman expressions of extremism, an extremism of our own making.

This mania also includes wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeves, as if, otherwise, God won’t be able to judge our religiosity. Take the recent example of the way many Pakistanis reacted to the niqab ban in France. Some women who use burqa or hijab say they feel liberated. In our media we hear their voices loud and clear, but never of the other side who suggests that a woman who observes hijab/ burqa/ niqab may as well be submitting to the historical tribal, male-driven tradition of claiming control over women.

Various Muslim women authors and thinkers believe that the observance of veil remains a dictate of Muslim men. They say that the practice is an outcome of laws and social mores constructed over the last many centuries by judges, ulema and lawmakers who were all men. Scholars like Javed Ghamdi, Ziauddin Sardar and Muhammad Arkhun, believe that Muslim women enjoyed greater autonomy in public and private life during the time of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) — an autonomy that later Muslim rulers and ulema took away.

Muslim women who do not use the veil are right to demand that if some of their sisters in France are so agitated by the veil ban, then they should be equally agitated by the forced veiling practised in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s only fair, if this really is a matter of the freedom of expression.

While we busy ourselves in discussing the niqab issue in France (where only the niqab or the covering of the face is banned, hijab is not), bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the niqab, we conveniently forget that in many Muslim countries women who believe that modesty is a state of mind and can be demonstrated without veiling are coming under increasing pressure.

My only hope is that we now allow ourselves the necessity to hold open debates about issues that till now we have cowardly avoided and in the process let them grow into political and social ogres of intolerance and myopia. It should also be noted that whenever we do let such debates take place in public, counter-arguments to the traditionalist ones too are given a platform and are accepted — not as thoughts coming from ‘misguided minds’ or wayward souls, but from those who are equally concerned about their country and society.

We don't need this former marxist a complete failure and also a drug addict to tell us what is right and what is wrong the orders of Islam are clear on Hijab Blashmey and other things and those will be implemented in Muslim lands

 

[rohailmalhi]

Express news are just a part of so called media network who are hell bent upon mud slinging activity on Pakistan. Run by bunch of hypocrite who are well paid to spread hatred in community and brain wash them with there lies and propaganda.

Most of the media people are nothing but bunch of liberal who have nothing to do with religion .Their religion is sex , drinking , drugs intake just like westerners (exception is there). How do you expect from these people to talk about Islam and Pakistan.

 

[Juice]

We don't need this former marxist a complete failure and also a drug addict to tell us what is right and what is wrong the orders of Islam are clear on Hijab Blashmey and other things and those will be implemented in Muslim lands

You forgot "His mom dresses him funny"

Express news are just a part of so called media network who are hell bent upon mud slinging activity on Pakistan. Run by bunch of hypocrite who are well paid to spread hatred in community and brain wash them with there lies and propaganda.

Most of the media people are nothing but bunch of liberal who have nothing to do with religion .Their religion is sex , drinking , drugs intake just like westerners (exception is there). How do you expect from these people to talk about Islam and Pakistan.

Like westerners? OH NO! Soon they will be doing that science and innovation stuff!

 

[Zarvan]

You forgot "His mom dresses him funny"

Like westerners? OH NO! Soon they will be doing that science and innovation stuff!

Those who have progressed in science in Pakistan are strict Muslims but these western slaves modernity is restricted to breaking laws of Islam and getting naked and drunk

 

[RabzonKhan]

Talk is cheap, some people never miss an opportunity to criticize liberalism and the West and yet they choose to live in the liberal –West, I wonder, if western liberal societies are so evil than what the heck are these people doing there?

Action speaks louder than words!