Age of madness

[RabzonKhan]

Allah Hafiz to Khuda Hafiz

Nadeem F. PARACHA
Sunday, 24 May, 2009

The first time Allah Hafiz was used in public was in 1985 when a famous TV host, a frequent sight on PTV during the Zia era, signed off her otherwise secular show with a firm ‘Allah Hafiz.’

As most Pakistanis over the ages of six and seven would remember, before the now ubiquitous ‘Allah Hafiz’ came ‘Khuda Hafiz’.

The immediate history of the demise of Khuda Hafiz can be traced back to a mere six to seven years in the past. It was in Karachi some time in 2002 when a series of banners started appearing across Sharea Faisal. Each banner had two messages. The first one advised Pakistani Muslims to stop addressing God by the informal ‘Tu’ and instead address him as ‘Aap’ (the respectful way of saying ‘you’ in Urdu). The second message advised Pakistanis to replace the term Khuda Hafiz with Allah Hafiz.


The banners were produced and installed by Islamic organisations associated with a famous mosque in Karachi. Ever since the 1980s, this institution had been a bastion of leading puritanical doctrines of Islam. Many of the institution’s scholars were, in one way or the other, also related to the Islamic intelligentsia sympathetic to the Taliban version of political Islam and of other similar fundamentalist outfits.

However, one just cannot study the Allah Hafiz phenomenon through what happened in 2002. This phenomenon has a direct link with the disastrous history of cultural casualties Pakistan has steadily been suffering for over thirty years now. Beyond the 2002 banner incident, whose two messages were then duly taken up by a series of Tableeghi Jamaat personnel and as well as trendsetting living room Islamic evangelists, a lot of groundwork had already taken place to culturally convert the largely pluralistic and religiously tolerant milieu of Pakistan into a singular concentration of Muslims following the “correct” version of Islam.

The overriding reasons for this were foremost political, as General Ziaul Haq and his politico-religious cohorts went about setting up madressahs in an attempt to harden the otherwise softer strain of faith that a majority of Pakistanis followed so they could be prepared for the grand ‘Afghan jihad’ against the atheistic Soviet Union with a somewhat literalist and highly politicised version of Islam. The above process not only politically radicalised sections of Pakistani society, its impact was apparent on culture at large as well.

For example, as bars and cinemas started closing down, young men and women, who had found space in these places to simply meet up, were forced to move to shady cafes, restaurants and parks which, by the mid-1980s, too started to be visited by cops and fanatical moral squads called the ‘Allah Tigers’, who ran around harassing couples in these spaces, scolding them for going against Islam, or, on most occasions, simply extorting money from the shaken couples through blackmail.

Then, getting a blanket ideological and judicial cover by the Zia dictatorship, the cops started to harass almost any couple riding a motorbike, a car or simply sitting at the beach. Without even asking whether the woman was the guy’s sister or mother (on many occasions they were!), the cops asked for the couples’ marriage certificate! Failing to produce one (which in most cases they couldn’t), hefty sums of money were extorted as the couples were threatened to be sent to jail under the dreadful Hudood Ordinances. The same one the Musharraf government eventually scrapped.


Some of these horrendous practices were duly stopped during the Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif governments in the 1990s, but the cat had long been set among the pigeons. Encouraged by their initial successes in the 1980s, Islamist culture-evangelists became a lot more aggressive in the 1990s. Drawing room and TV evangelists went about attempting to construct a “true” Islamic society, and at least one of their prescriptions was to replace the commonly used Khuda Hafiz with Allah Hafiz.


This was done because these crusading men and women believed that once they had convinced numerous Pakistanis to follow the faith by adorning a long beard and hijab, the words Khuda Hafiz would not seem appropriate coming out from the mouths of such Islamic-looking folks. They believed that Khuda can mean any God, whereas the Muslims’ God was Allah. Some observers suggest that since many non-Muslims residing in Pakistan too had started to use Khuda Hafiz, this incensed the crusaders who thought that non-Muslim Pakistanis were trying to adopt Islamic gestures only to pollute them. The first time Allah Hafiz was used in public was in 1985 when a famous TV host, a frequent sight on PTV during the Zia era, signed off her otherwise secular show with a firm ‘Allah Hafiz.’ However, even though some Islamic preachers continued the trend in the 1990s, it did not trickle down to the mainstream until the early 2000s. As society continued to collapse inwards — especially the urban middle class — the term Allah Hafiz started being used as if Pakistanis had always said Allah Hafiz.


So much so that today, if you are to bid farewell by saying Khuda Hafiz, you will either generate curious facial responses, or worse, get a short lecture on why you should always say Allah Hafiz instead — a clear case of glorified cultural isolationism to ‘protect’ one’s comfort zone of myopia from the influential and uncontrollable trends of universal pluralism?

I’m afraid this is the case

 

[RabzonKhan]

Barbaric practices

Editorial
Thursday, 28 May, 2009

THE police have finally registered a case against a Bahawalnagar landlord for forcing a ‘marriage’ between his 50-year-old brother and an under-age girl. It is worth noting, however, that this became possible only after the victim’s father, a peasant, brought the matter to the Punjab chief minister’s notice. Even so, there has been no arrest and few indications of a full inquiry. The case illustrates how common medieval transgressions against citizens’ constitutional rights are in Pakistan. This is particularly true of rural and underdeveloped areas where the effective control of tribal and feudal elites — that often collude in the crime — renders the state’s authority nominal. The victims are the poor and powerless, deserving therefore of greater access to police and local bodies’ officials. In actuality, however, representatives of the government are not immune to the feudal and tribal elites’ power, thus nipping in the bud any chance of justice for the victims.

The immediate victims of barbaric crimes such as karo-kari, vani and swara are usually women, condemned to virtual slavery and certain abuse. Despite being citizens with constitutional freedoms and human rights, a medieval system of patriarchy and an ineffective state justice system allow them to be reduced to the status of chattel on the basis of gender. Some, including politicians, defend such crimes as social or tribal customs. They forget that no custom or tradition can be allowed to violate the laws and constitution of the country. Such abuse tramples the victims’ rights while simultaneously making a mockery of the state justice system. The project to modernise Pakistan must include the extension of the state’s writ and protection to all areas, particularly where tribal and feudal elites hold sway. Meanwhile, access to police and other complaint centres must be improved, and the functioning of such institutions be cleansed of the influence of powerful individuals.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Side-effect

How do we fight?

Friday, May 29, 2009
Harris Khalique

A friend sent me a joke the other day through a text message on my cell phone. It says, "George Bush and Barack Obama were sitting in a bar in Texas. A guy came up to them and asked, 'What are you talking about gentlemen?' Bush answered, 'We are planning the third world war.' The guy got a little excited and asked, 'So what's going to happen?' Bush said, 'Well, we are going to eliminate at least 140 million Muslims and one really beautiful girl.' The guy asks, 'Why a beautiful girl?' Bush turns to Obama and says, 'See, I told you. Nobody is going to worry about 140 million Muslims.'" My friend called me and said that this is the bitter reality and people like me just simply do not realise that every single westerner in this world wants our culture and civilisation to be eliminated in the heart of his heart. She lamented the insensitivity of so-called liberal and progressive people in the Muslim world who are shamelessly one-sided and support Americans and their western allies. My friend shares her feelings with a large number of television anchors, newspaper columnists and supposedly Pakistani-nationalist commentators propagating against the critical and enlightened voices in the country with a cultivated vengeance.

Maybe this is true although I don't believe that. Every society, civilisation and country has its own share of fanatics, racists and lunatics. However, to think that there is a consensus among a people or a civilisation to have us eliminated or perpetually subjugated is a little far-fetched. Where there is evil, there is good. In all non-Muslim societies, which are seen as enemies or adversaries by the bigoted Muslim opinion leaders, there is no dearth of individuals and institutions which are genuinely humane and unprejudiced. But my friend would say that how anybody, including myself, could claim to be all knowing. Therefore, I maintain that may be there are people out there with a design to finish off all Muslims. And now we take it from here.

So what are we doing about it? How do we plan to fight those who are out there to destroy us? What is our strategy for immediate survival of this generation and long-term prosperity for generations to come? What is there in the enemy's arsenal which is being used to exterminate us? What is there in our arsenal to defend us from its wrath? Let me attempt simple answers to the last two questions. The enemy's arsenal is replenished before being consumed every single day by new findings in all possible fields of natural and social sciences. The enemy has art, science, technology and culture at its disposal. It invests in things which are important for physical and intellectual well-being in its societies. The enemy makes its decisions in a democratic way. Its own people are consulted and their opinion respected. The enemy has created legal and social institutions which assure the sanctity of the lives and property of those who are its citizens. There may be some lapses but the overarching safety and security umbrella is held tight above the general populace. Last but not least, the enemy has the most modern weapon systems with the ability to inflict total destruction on the challenger.

In our arsenal, we have anger, rhetoric, slogans, ignorance, disgruntled youth, monarchies and dictatorships, indifferent and corrupt ruling elite, religious zealots who only have the ability to exercise their myopic faith on the frail body of a Muslim woman, and paranoia of all who may look different from us. Our weapon systems are in effect bought or borrowed from the enemy's arsenal except for the suicide bombers who we have only been able to use in our own lands besides the bordering districts of Israel. The only weapon we have assembled ourselves has caused more than 95 per cent casualties to those who share our faith.

The irony is that once we equip ourselves with knowledge and democratic institutions, we won't have an enemy to fight with.


The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaign

 

[RabzonKhan]

Killing your children

Friday, July 17, 2009
Sabina Qazi

How does one react to news stories, first thing in the morning, with headlines such as "cold-blooded murder; Father kills his two daughters in a bid to 'send them to heaven' "? After the initial shock and feeling of disbelief, is it anger that we feel? Or is the story commonplace and one that will be discussed for a few days with some raging against the savagery of the lower classes and others discussing why and how a father could do something like this. Will it then be forgotten till the next time something similar takes place?

For the time being, however, this incident remains the topic of choice.

Many people take it from media reports that he is mad, that after years of paranoia, the subject of which apparently is his wife, he decided to kill the girls to save them from becoming like her. The thing is, how does one react to this kind of news? While some people are enraged (nothing short of the father being publicly hanged will satisfy them), there are others who immediately start finding reasons for what he did. Many have been heard saying, "he is crazy," "yeh qayamat ki nishaani hai," or "he must be suffering from some mental illness," or even "his wife drove him crazy so he took out his frustration on his children."

Over the last few years, news of such incidents may have been few and far between, but the occurrence of them is frightening, to say the least. A few years ago, a father slit the throats of his two daughters because some religious "authority" convinced him that "zamana bohat kharab ho-gaya hai" and that this was the best way of getting to heaven. After killing the girls he killed himself. A few months back a woman stabbed her husband and drowned three of her five children. The fact that this sort of thing is happening is what is significant. In a country like ours where there is very little help for those teetering on the fringes of insanity there can be little or no help, mostly because getting psychiatric help is taboo. And because of years of conditioned silence on this subject most of us really do not know how to react. We either want them dead or we start listing excuses for their actions. The latter, of course, does not mean we absolve them of blame, but we are very quick to judge them and find reasons for their behaviour. Instead of focussing on what has happened we spend an unnecessary amount of time on the "why." This may be a clichéd topic but it remains the reason behind such incidents. There is no use in reiterating how close qayamat is or that the zamana is beyond help, or that such men should be hanged. We might as well spend this time repeating again and again that we need greater awareness of the benefits of psychiatric help, and that there is nothing taboo about asking for it as well.

In fact, it is easier in our society to just say, "jin charh-gaya-hoga" than believe that maybe there is a mental illness involved in determining outlandish acts of some members of our population.

It is not enough to say that we are unable to react to such news simply because we are used to keeping silent about such instances. Maybe the news is of such a nature that it shocks us into silence. The most natural love in the world is between a child and parent. Evidently there are people in this world who can go against the laws of nature. What drives them to do such things is not number one on the list of priorities. But the fact that they can and have already done so. And in the face of the most unnatural of acts one had best remain silent.

When I talked to people about Khurshid Fatima and Samun, their reaction was not very varied. Everyone was shocked and upset. Almost everyone I know experienced a tightening in the chest or a sort of sickness in the heart, and there was plenty of pity for the two innocent girls who would never have been allowed to leave with their father had anyone suspected him of any sort of madness. Of course, no one would have taken him for help, he would have merely been thrown out of the house or his wife would have sought a separation if not divorce but at least the children would have been safe. But, then, who is to say he wouldn't have found a way to get to them. Which brings me back to the fact that, had they realised the madness that was bubbling underneath the surface and taken him for psychiatric help, the murder might have been prevented. It just might have – but we will never know.

 

[muse]

"Islamic" Republic:


Gender violence translates into despicable crimes in Rawalpindi

* Police record shows 15 women killed in the name of honour, 14 raped,
two thrown acid on, 15 tortured and over 70 kidnapped so far this year

By Imran Asghar

RAWALPINDI: Violence against women goes unnoticed and unchecked in Rawalpindi exposing the fact that performance of government and non-government organisations in this sector is below expectation.

Police record of first six and a half months of this year shows that 10-15 women have been honour-killed; 14 girls and women raped; two have become victims of acid throwing, one of whom died of burns; over 15 physically tortured and over 70 kidnapped.

It is soothing that the number of cases of violence against women remains less this year than the year before.

Honour killing: In the worst honour killing case, a woman and her aunt were killed in full view of a Jirga in the limits of Westridge Police Station.

Mubarrak Shah told police that he organised a Jirga to get his daughter Behmina divorced when her husband, along with four accomplices, opened indiscriminate fire on the participants, killing Behmina and her aunt Hakim Jan on the spot. Three more people were killed in the incident also. The police are still investigating the case.

On July 2, two women named Sadiq Jan and Rasheeda were killed in a Jirga that sat to resolve a domestic dispute between two wives of a man.

Rape: Fourteen girls and women have been raped so far this year. In a shocking case, a man reported to Sadiqabad Police Station that his son-in-law had raped his daughter.

A woman of Gulzar-e-Quaid told Airport Police Station that her neighbour Sajjad and his aunt stormed into her house and raped her at gunpoint.

Burnt to death: RA Bazaar police was reported that Razia Malik, of Dhok Syedian, got divorce from her second husband Waseem Riaz in January. As a result, Riaz poured flammable lubricants on her while she was asleep in her house and burnt her alive.

Acid throwing: A 22-year-old woman was murdered by her in-laws in the limits of Saddar Barroni Police Station, over a trivial issue. Victim Saba recorded her statement with police before she died. She stated that her husband and his mother Azizun Nisa beat her black and blue because her family was not ready to marry her younger sister with her husband’s younger brother.

She said when she collapsed of torture and sought water, her husband poured acid in her mouth. She breathed her last at Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital in March.

The second acid victims survived the attack but much of her body has been burnt. RA Bazaar police were reported that Asif threw acid on Gulnaz Bibi, 27, over a trivial dispute and fled away. The acid burnt her face, eyes, backside, sensitive body parts and arms but she survived.

Physical torture: In the limits of Gangmandi Police Station on May 19, Zafar kicked his three months pregnant wife Shahida Butt so badly that she miscarried.

In the limits of Sadiqabad Police Station, a man attempted to chop off limbs of his 20-year-old daughter and his son-in-law over a domestic dispute. He failed in his attempt but left the victims severely injured.

Pregnant woman killed: In the limits of Westridge Police Station, unidentified attackers killed an eight months pregnant woman and threw her body in a deserted place on Halli Road.

Kidnappings: Around 70 girls and women were kidnapped this year. A police official gives out a typical explanation station most girls ran away with their lovers but their parents lodge kidnapping cases

 

[RabzonKhan]

Terror in T T Singh

Sunday, August 02, 2009

In Toba Tek Singh in Punjab, that town immortalized by Sadaat Hassan Manto's moving story of the madness of Partition in 1947, insanity has struck once again. A mob of Muslims, following announcements on mosque loudspeakers that Christians had burned pages from the Holy Quran, attacked the homes of those they declared 'infidels'. Christian groups, who have rushed to the area following calls for help, say some 40 houses have been damaged after they were set alight, and an unknown number of people, including women and children, hurt. We have seen similar acts of mob frenzy in the past. Quite often it has been found on investigation that some issue of personal animosity has inspired it. Clerics and extremist groups have in some cases played a negative role. All this of course needs to be investigated.

The Blasphemy Law introduced by General Ziaul Haq has made it easier to persecute people on the basis of sometimes completely mala fide accusations. The law needs review and amendment. But we must also ask what local authorities were doing as people went on the rampage. It is hard to believe they could do nothing to prevent the mayhem. Their lack of action and sometimes connivance with those acting against minority groups have, in the past, made all kinds of outrages possible. Their role too needs to be inquired into and clear-cut instructions given for the future so that there is no doubt about the need to do everything possible to protect any group of citizens facing peril as a consequence of their religious beliefs.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Editorial: Fear and shame of Gojra

August 03, 2009

After a week of simmering Muslim-Christian dispute over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in tehsil Gojra in Toba Tek Singh district in Punjab, violence has broken out simply because the local administration ignored orders from Lahore to control the situation. The Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, has suspended the persons responsible for letting this very familiar type of incident get out of hand. Seven Christians have been burnt alive and their houses torched. There may be more casualties.

As usual a “banned organisation” — Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti says it was Sipah Sahaba — came in from outside the town and took over and used acid and petrol bombs to destroy property and kill Christian women and children, while the local government and police simply did nothing. The federal government has taken serious note by sending in the Rangers and the Punjab government has ordered an inquiry into what really transpired. Compensation for the destroyed property has already been announced.

There is a pattern of violence against Christians in Punjab that cannot be ignored. First of all, let us ask why it happens mainly in Punjab? Some facts are illustrative. The Christians of Pakistan are the largest religious minority in Pakistan. The total number of Christians in Pakistan was at least 2 million in 2008, or 1.1 percent of the population. An examination of birth records yields a total number of Christians at 2.8 million. More than 90 percent of the country’s Christians reside in Punjab, making them the largest religious minority in the province. And 60 percent of them live in the villages, and in most cases are more indigenous to their areas than the Muslims.

Charges of blasphemy and desecration of the Quran are “used” against them, but the latter is used against them collectively, followed by organised dispossession and destruction of property. In 1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony 12 kilometres east of Khanewal, Multan Division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500 policemen acting together after an incident of alleged desecration of the Quran was reported. The police first evacuated the Christian population of 15,000, then helped the raiders use battle-field explosives to blow up their houses and property. Sipah Sahaba was also blamed by the Christians for that holocaust.

In 2005, the Christian community of Sangla Hill in Nankana district in Punjab experienced a most hair-raising day of violence and vandalism. After allegations of desecration of the Quran, a mob of 3,000 led by the local elected politician and police burnt down three churches, a missionary-run school, two hostels and several houses belonging to the Christian community. Lahore’s archbishop stated that the attackers had been brought there by buses from outside. The Punjab government once again acted quickly to compensate for the neglect and complicity of the local administration, but was prevented from proceeding fairly by a renowned Sunni cleric of Lahore who took his own lashkar of youths to “defend” the Muslims in Sangla Hill. Ironically, he has since fallen to a suicide-bomber of the Taliban.

These were big incidents that not only shook Pakistan but the world too. The Archbishop of Canterbury, already expressing sympathy with Pakistan after the earthquake in Azad Kashmir, was forced to say after Sangla that Pakistan was in the process of redefining who could be its citizens. Smaller incidents of persecution of the Christians have never stopped, but Gojra tells us that holocausts can repeat themselves as civic virtue declines in Pakistan under the influence of extremism.

We don’t know whom the laws of blasphemy and desecration were supposed to target, but their intent was to stop the crime mentioned in them. Tragically, blasphemy cases have proliferated after the promulgation of the blasphemy law, and action taken against the accused is not by the state but by the vigilantes the state cannot control. Section 295-B Defiling of copy of the holy Quran says: “Whoever wilfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Quran or an extract therefrom, or uses it in a derogatory manner or any unlawful purpose, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life”. But the punishment has been inflicted without trial on people who had nothing to do with it.

These are signals of doom. And the crime is being committed by the non-state actors that were once considered “assets” of the military-state. Their dominance in Punjab is well established and their control over local population to the detriment of local administration is also well known. The laws mean nothing under these circumstances.

 

[RabzonKhan]

NA passes resolution against Gojra killings

Staff Report
August 04, 2009

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Monday adopted a unanimous resolution condemning the Gojra killings and asked the Punjab government to bring the culprits to justice.

During a debate on the Gojra killings, several MNAs blamed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in Punjab for failing to stop the crime, alleging the district administration was party to the deaths of the seven Christians burnt alive in riots. The MNAs termed the killings a conspiracy designed to defame Pakistan and Islam, and demanded exemplary punishment for those involved.

Shahbaz Bhatti, PPP minority MNA and federal minorities minister, alleged the district administration had failed to act despite having prior information of the mob violence.

Meanwhile, PML-Quaid parliamentarians and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam MNA Asiya Nasir staged separate walkouts to register their protest against the atrocities committed against minorities in Gojra. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani informed the House that the Punjab government had ordered a judicial inquiry into the incidents, and promised that its results would be shared with the parliamentarians.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Mob justice

Sunday, 09 Aug, 2009

IN the past 10 days we have witnessed two horrifying incidents of mob violence. In Gojra, several Pakistani Christians were killed and scores had their homes torched by a mob enraged over allegations of the desecration of Quranic text. In Muridke, a factory owner and another man were beaten and killed when a factory clerk accused the owner of having desecrated holy verses inscribed on a calendar. Here too it was an angry mob out to seek ‘revenge’. A fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that the unarmed police team present proved helpless against the wrath of the crowd. A third such incident was narrowly avoided in Sanghar on Friday when violent street protests broke out after a shopkeeper accused a woman of having desecrated the Quran. The woman says that in fact she had been settling her accounts with the shopkeeper and that she flung down his accounts book in fury at the inflated amount he claimed she owed. The shopkeeper disappeared after being asked to lodge an FIR, while police guards have been deployed at the woman’s house.

These incidents show the religious chauvinism and intolerance that is now rampant in the country. More importantly though, they illustrate how the ‘blasphemy law’ — Section 295-C of the criminal code — has become a means of inciting unbridled mob brutality, settling scores and victimising communities and individuals. The blasphemy law has become a means of uncontrollable persecution. There is a need, of course, for the strict enforcement of law and order, as well as communal self-restraint: in both Gojra and Muridke, for example, mosque loudspeakers were used to spread word of the alleged desecration, and the police proved unable to protect the victims. However, it is also time that parliament revisited the law with a view to examining its intent and abuse. It must either be reframed so that it cannot be exploited or manipulated, or be revoked in its entirety. Laws that provide a pretext for mob justice and uncontrolled violence cannot be seen as beneficial to the interests of the country or its citizenry.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Smokers’ Corner: It’s a shame

Sunday, 16 Aug, 2009

Hardly a week had passed after the shameful attacks on the lives and livelihood of the besieged Christian community of Gojra, that a well-known Islamic televangelist appeared on his show on a local TV channel and freely exhibited the audacity to explain this attack by vicious Islamic sectarian organisations as a conspiracy by the West to make Pakistanis question the contentious Blasphemy Laws.

First of all, as usual, before spouting this claptrap, such TV hosts have absolutely no substantive proofs ever to back their demagogic finger-pointing rituals.

But utmost is the fact that the tongue-wagging gentleman had himself been embroiled last year in a stunning controversy where he was directly accused by his former party, the MQM, and some bold journalists, for initiating and encouraging attacks against Punjab’s Ahmadiyya community through his show.

Thus, what moral right does this highly animated fellow has to even address the issue of the attacks in Gojra, let alone offer bizarre and thoroughly unreasonable theories, pointing fingers at the usually elusive and unsubstantiated conglomerate of conspirators?

His self-righteous and delusional take on the said issue must have come as a hurtful bolt of insensitivity to those who lost their loved ones in the insane fires of fanaticism that almost completely burned down the Christian community in Gojra.

I would also like to question the mainstream TV channel he is a part of; a channel that usually loves to harp about its love for democracy, tolerance and justice, but continues to give wide open spaces to so-called ‘experts’ and ‘Islamic scholars’ who have actually turned religion into a licence to rationalise hate and half-truths.

It was a disgrace watching the same gentleman gleaming and rubbing his hands last year as one of his ‘scholar’ guests lashed out at the Ahmadiyya community, creating a tragic commotion against the community in Lahore.

The host showed not even the slightest indication of expressing any kind of remorse, and neither did the channel even when certain leading newspapers ran stories, editorials and articles on the event.

Next up was his even more bizarre reaction to the Swat girl’s flogging episode. He first condemned the event, mainly because his channel was one of the first ones to break the horrifying news.

However soon, the host suddenly took a sharp turn and started hurling abuse at the supposed ‘agents’ of the West and India, who he claimed were behind the flogging ‘drama,’ and also mocked liberal Pakistanis for exaggerating the issue.

He called such Pakistanis ‘enlightened’ with such venom and sarcasm that it seemed he was rooting for obscurantist darkness over spiritual and secular enlightenment.

After all, the whole notion of obscurantism is tailor-made for exactly such characters who hide behind their televised celebratory status, constructed from unsubstantiated accusations, a warped understanding of religion and politics, and more so, a smug and arrogant insensitivity towards the emotionally venerable sides of human nature.

The truth is, such men, who are these days a dime a dozen on the mainstream electronic media for entirely cynical economic reasons on the part of the channels who hire them in their mad race for ratings, have been of no service at all to the religion and the country that they claim they are there to save from supposed ‘anti-Islam/Pakistan forces.’

Not even once have these elusive forces convincingly been exposed — at least never through any academically and journalistically sound proofs and sources, but instead rhetorical hate speeches or a messy jumbling up of bits and pieces taken from populist conspiracy theories found in anarchic pulp literature, unsubstantiated cyber rants, and low-budget B-movie ‘documentaries’ are used to build fiery narratives that claim to offer ‘facts’ and ‘expose’ the workings of the forces that are creating sectarian, religious and political turmoil in Pakistan.

The fact that the channel actually decided to give its host the space and freedom to comment the way he did on the Gojra incident when the scars of the event were still fresh and bleeding, shows just how obsessive we become to at once promote and propagate half-truths just to defend and obscure the hollowness of that pretence of tolerance and equality we all love to portray.

A shame indeed.

 

[MilesTogo]

Side-effect

How do we fight?

Friday, May 29, 2009
Harris Khalique

A friend sent me a joke the other day through a text message on my cell phone. It says, "George Bush and Barack Obama were sitting in a bar in Texas. A guy came up to them and asked, 'What are you talking about gentlemen?' Bush answered, 'We are planning the third world war.' The guy got a little excited and asked, 'So what's going to happen?' Bush said, 'Well, we are going to eliminate at least 140 million Muslims and one really beautiful girl.' The guy asks, 'Why a beautiful girl?' Bush turns to Obama and says, 'See, I told you. Nobody is going to worry about 140 million Muslims.'" My friend called me and said that this is the bitter reality and people like me just simply do not realise that every single westerner in this world wants our culture and civilisation to be eliminated in the heart of his heart. She lamented the insensitivity of so-called liberal and progressive people in the Muslim world who are shamelessly one-sided and support Americans and their western allies. My friend shares her feelings with a large number of television anchors, newspaper columnists and supposedly Pakistani-nationalist commentators propagating against the critical and enlightened voices in the country with a cultivated vengeance.

Maybe this is true although I don't believe that. Every society, civilisation and country has its own share of fanatics, racists and lunatics. However, to think that there is a consensus among a people or a civilisation to have us eliminated or perpetually subjugated is a little far-fetched. Where there is evil, there is good. In all non-Muslim societies, which are seen as enemies or adversaries by the bigoted Muslim opinion leaders, there is no dearth of individuals and institutions which are genuinely humane and unprejudiced. But my friend would say that how anybody, including myself, could claim to be all knowing. Therefore, I maintain that may be there are people out there with a design to finish off all Muslims. And now we take it from here.

So what are we doing about it? How do we plan to fight those who are out there to destroy us? What is our strategy for immediate survival of this generation and long-term prosperity for generations to come? What is there in the enemy's arsenal which is being used to exterminate us? What is there in our arsenal to defend us from its wrath? Let me attempt simple answers to the last two questions. The enemy's arsenal is replenished before being consumed every single day by new findings in all possible fields of natural and social sciences. The enemy has art, science, technology and culture at its disposal. It invests in things which are important for physical and intellectual well-being in its societies. The enemy makes its decisions in a democratic way. Its own people are consulted and their opinion respected. The enemy has created legal and social institutions which assure the sanctity of the lives and property of those who are its citizens. There may be some lapses but the overarching safety and security umbrella is held tight above the general populace. Last but not least, the enemy has the most modern weapon systems with the ability to inflict total destruction on the challenger.

In our arsenal, we have anger, rhetoric, slogans, ignorance, disgruntled youth, monarchies and dictatorships, indifferent and corrupt ruling elite, religious zealots who only have the ability to exercise their myopic faith on the frail body of a Muslim woman, and paranoia of all who may look different from us. Our weapon systems are in effect bought or borrowed from the enemy's arsenal except for the suicide bombers who we have only been able to use in our own lands besides the bordering districts of Israel. The only weapon we have assembled ourselves has caused more than 95 per cent casualties to those who share our faith.

The irony is that once we equip ourselves with knowledge and democratic institutions, we won't have an enemy to fight with.


The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaign

very nicely said!

 

[freeman]

Age of madness alright.

A mate of mine, his name is Ivan. He's a great guy and can do some amazing things. One time he died in a car crash but he raised himself from the dead. He can also heal people with a touch and turn water into wine. Oh yeah, and he was also born from lady who has never had sex before.


We live in an age where technology has more than surpassed our caveman and primitive perceptions.
Wonder when people will realise their fate is in their own hands?

 

[RabzonKhan]

VIEW: Historical distortions

Gulmina Bilal Ahmad
October 08, 2010

The numbers are shrinking and the circle is tightening. ‘They’ have added another notch in their belts. Dr Muhammad Farooq, a professional psychiatrist and religious scholar, was martyred in his clinic last week as he took a break for lunch. Extremely articulate in English, Urdu and Pashto, he was a man that one could engage in a conversation on literally any topic related to medicine and religion. Always available and eager to address questions that interested him, Farooq was a man who was a harbinger of change.

Farooq spoke about moderation long before it became fashionable or politically correct. During debates for the repeal of the draconian Hudood Ordinances, Farooq wrote and spoke, using arguments from the Quran that lent weight to the activism against the ordinances. When the then provincial government of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal came up with their own interpretation of the Taliban-Wahabiist inspired Hasba Bill, it was Farooq who took pains to point out that, in the Islamic context, this is unnecessary. The fact that Farooq had remained a member of the Jamaat-i-Islami, but had an independent perspective was not well received by the conservative Right.

For us chattering classes, Farooq was a godsend as he helped us understand and equip ourselves with the language and arguments in the light of religion. Lately, he was involved in the Sabawon project of rehabilitation of potential suicide bomber children of Swat. He would passionately talk about his work there, underlining the importance of ‘correcting’ the children’s religious knowledge as well as behavioral skills. According to the late scholar, the Swati children who were being trained to be potential suicide bombers were taught that there are six pillars of Islam rather than five, of which armed struggle against an ‘infidel’ was as important and obligatory on every Muslim as salaat. Dr Farooq was thus, in a sense, debriefing children at the Sabawon project, which did not go down well with the Taliban. It is no wonder that he was on their hit list and was constantly receiving threats for a number of years.

Farooq did not have any guards, etc. His only self-installed security feature was that no one knew in the morning which of the two cars he would drive out in. Living in a small place like Mardan and given the adversaries’ infrastructure and links, this was not much of a deterrent, but this was all the middle class Islamic scholar could do. The threat became a reality last week when he sat down for lunch and was shot five times in the chest by the Taliban disguised as patients at his clinic.

The Taliban have a well-publicised list of people they want to take out. This list includes government officials, columnists, academics, religious scholars and members of the development sector. The means and tools of each on the list might be different, but all have one thing in common: they are adamant that the Taliban will not gain further ground. Gradually, the Taliban are not only gaining ground, they are ticking each one of the lists as they add to the notches in their suicide belts.

These are drastic times as each one of the moderate, educated elements, especially of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are being killed. Drastic times call for drastic measures. One drastic measure should be to stop passing the buck and addressing the core problem, not just its appendices. The Taliban and al Qaeda are the appendices. The core issue is the ideology that unites the whole conservative Right, which includes militant and non-militant organisations, networks and parties. The sharing of Wahabiist values is what unites al Qaeda, the Taliban, Jamat-ud-Dawa, Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz and Tehreek-i-Insaaf. This is the reason why in DG Khan Jamaat-ud-Dawa is working together with the Jamaat-i-Islami in providing relief. This is the reason why on the floor of the house, a member of the PML-N, Shakil Rohail Asghar, snubs Marvi Memon when she implored that Aafia should not be called the ‘daughter of the nation’, as the allegations against her are not clear. Shakil Rohail Asghar of the PML-N declared: “Do not undermine the dignity of the nation. Aafia Siddiqi will be sitting in this house in your place after some time.” The question that begs to be answered: is the PML-N going to be awarding a party ticket to her?

The Wahabis are the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahab. Wahab argued that Muslims who engage in acts of shirk must be killed. He interpreted a proclaimed precedent set by the first ‘Rightly Guided’ Caliph Abu Bakr. Wahab claimed that Abu Bakr fought and killed many so-called hypocrites, despite the fact that they practised the five pillars of Islam. Arguing that his followers were justified in killing their Muslim opponents, he contended that the Ottoman Turks, their allies and the ‘hypocritical Muslims’ were infidels, deserving of the worst death. He would cite a precedent in which Abu Bakr allegedly burnt the so-called hypocrites to death. Wahab used this alleged precedent to argue that Wahabis were justified in torturing and killing their opponents. This is the same precedent that the militant groups cite to justify killings of Muslims. However, what is little known is that, according to Islamic scholars, this precedent is not supported by history. Many classic Muslims scholars such as Khaled Abou El Fadl in Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law declared that the report of Abu Bakr using fire against Muslim opponents was invented and reported by highly suspect individuals.

In fact, classic Islamic scholars have argued that declaring a Muslim to be an infidel is a grave sin in Islam and, according to Abou El Fadl, “even Ibn Taymiyya, the jurist Abd-al-Wahab was so fond of, prohibited the practice of takfir, i.e. labeling Muslims to be infidels and there are almost 52 traditions attributed to the Prophet [PBUH] on the sin of takfir.”

The core issue is to highlight the loopholes in an ideology that is being propagated incorrectly at such devastating cost that we are losing people like Dr Muhammad Farooq.

The writer is an Islamabad-based consultant.

 

[muse]

Rabzon

These excellent threads you have created are delight for forum members. Keep'em coming!

 

[Contrarian]

Karo Kari is a type of “honour” killing, it involves the murder of a female member of the family by a male relative, because she is thought to have brought dishonor to the family. This evil custom is mostly practiced in rural and tribal areas of Sind.

It is present in the rural areas of India as well.
Though happy to say that these 'traditions' are slowly but very steadily dying in India with better education and communication development in rural India.

The only cure is better education and exposure for these problems.