Age of madness

[RabzonKhan]

What happened to the PPP?

By Rauf Klasra
February 13, 2011

Top PPP leaders, right from President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to the brigades of ministers, appear to have quietly accepted the bitter fact that they do not have the required competence, courage and political will to protect the fast-diminishing ideology and democratic credentials for which their old guard once stood and for which it even went to the gallows.

The most troubling thing about present-day PPP leadership is that it does not seem to have maintained even a remote link with the legacy of Zulifkar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) and Benazir Bhutto (BB), both of whom were assassinated by the very forces they had dared to challenge.

This analysis makes us draw a disturbing conclusion: Have present-day PPP leaders brought about fundamental changes in their personal thinking and in the party’s philosophy, dumping the ‘outdated’ party manifesto, because of the lessons they have learnt from the tragic fall of ZAB and BB?

If the shameful silence over the most foul assassination of Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer was not enough, the shocking news about a Hindu MPA from Sindh disowning his country and migrating to India has further put a dent in the claims of PPP leaders that they stand to protect Jinnah’s Pakistan. In fact, the persecution of Hindus has become a regular feature in Sindh, where the PPP is in charge.

The most unfortunate aspect of this disturbing development is that PPP leaders, instead of applying a zero-tolerance policy to send a strong message to the killers of Governor Taseer, made themselves a laughing stock when they tried to hold Mian Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif responsible for the conditions that led to the murder. The PPP leaders conveniently forgot that both brothers had, at least, managed to get a joint resolution condemning the assassination of Taseer passed from the Punjab assembly. No question was asked from PPP leaders as to why such resolutions were not passed by the PPP-dominated houses of parliament and the other three provincial governments. Even Prime Minister Gilani, infamously known for standing in the National Assembly to speak on all sorts of trivial matters, preferred to stay quiet on Taseer’s issue.

However, the PPP still has defiant and bold voices, which have refused to be silenced, though they are few in numbers. No doubt, Sherry Rehman stands tall among them, refusing to leave Pakistan despite a shameful telephonic call from Rehman Malik, asking her to immediately do so.

A vocal Fauzia Wahab was another exception. She, too took a bold stance in condemning those who supported Taseer’s killing. Last but not the least, PPP MNA Palwasha Behram joined the ranks of Sherry Rehman and Fauzia Wahab, when she too blasted her own government in the National Assembly for the deafening silence of its government and her fellow parliamentarians over the unfortunate fleeing of Hindus from Pakistan.

The dilemma of the present-day PPP leaders is that they don’t have any ideological attachment with the legacy of Bhutto, as many of them were equally loyal to General Ziaul Haq. Even Gilani and Sajjad Qureshi, (the father of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi) shared power with General Zia, who had hanged Bhutto. So, the shameful fall of the PPP is quite understandable. When the PPP’s men have preferred to bury their heads in sand in the name of political expediency and merely to complete their five-year tenure in power, then it becomes more important for all of us to show respect to these few good and brave women from the PPP.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2011.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Herald exclusive: Shrunken space

By Nasir Jamal and Madiha Sattar
Feb 15 2011

Crushing the voice of reason: a massive rally in Karachi against amendments to the blasphemy law.

Holding a memorial reference for Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, who was shot dead on January 4 by a member of his security detail because of his stance against the blasphemy law, had not even been the original intent of the Citizens For Democracy (CFD). Founded in December last year as a network for those unhappy with the spread of religious extremism in Pakistan, and especially with the blasphemy law, at first its members wanted to hold a seminar on the law itself. They tried to book the auditorium at the Pakistan Institute for International Affairs in Karachi’s Saddar area, explains founding member Noman Quadri. They were refused. When Taseer was murdered and the issue became too hot to handle, the CFD decided to hold a memorial for him instead.

Initially the Karachi Arts Council agreed, but at the last minute withdrew. “They said they had received direct and indirect threats and had heard from sources that our event would be targeted,” says CFD member Beena Sarwar. The next stop was the Karachi Press Club, historically a place open to people who have all types of causes to publicise and injustices to protest. But press club officials refused to allow the CFD to hold the event at its premises, Quadri says . Tahir Hasan Khan, the president of the club, claims the CFD’s request was not turned down. According to him, given the sensitivity of the issue the administration needed to consult the club’s officials before arriving at a decision, which meant they could not say yes immediately. Insiders say the press club’s governing body was unwilling to give permission “because it could have threatened the club’s members”.

Sarwar believes the club did not need to consult its governing body. “We know that they can take such decisions without all that bureaucracy. They have done it many times in the past,” she says. For Quadri, then, the reason for the refusal was simple. “The club was not willing to host any event associated with Taseer or the blasphemy law,” he says.

The event was finally held at the offices of the Pakistan Medical Association. But the small space available there could not hold the crowd of about 500 that showed up, a literal manifestation of the shrinking space for moderate voices in Pakistani public discourse. Nor is this surprising when one considers how little Taseer’s own party has done to protect and expand this space. When Mumtaz Qadri publicly confessed to killing the governor, Taseer’s sympathisers were shocked to hear many Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders, including Babar Awan, the federal law minister, and Fauzia Wahab, the party’s information secretary, dubbing the killing a “political murder” instead of seeing it as an assassination carried out on religious grounds.

And after refraining from supporting Taseer on his stand on the blasphemy law while he was alive, the party is yet to officially organise a meeting or a reference in his honour. The only mention of his death in a party-organised event so far – apart from perfunctory messages of condolence from senior leaders and a week-long suspension of party activity – was when PPP co-chairperson Bilawal Bhutto addressed a London memorial reference for Taseer.

“The decision to not play up the religious side of the murder came from the top party leadership because the government cannot afford to open a new front with rightist groups and parties,” a PPP provincial leader from Lahore admits to the Herald. The party and its struggling government in Islamabad clearly do not want to be seen as pitching themselves against the religious right on the issue of the widespread misuse of the blasphemy law.

This reluctance to back Taseer’s views from one of the most liberal political parties in the country seems to be both a manifestation and a cause of the shrinking space for frank, rational debate on issues that are creating deep fissures in Pakistani society and ultimately leading to violence. “This is a message to all liberal and progressive people to keep quiet and scare and intimidate them,” Taseer’s daughter Sara told foreign media outlets after her father’s killing, “[it] is a message to every liberal [Pakistani] to shut up or be shot.” A Lahore-based political scientist who does not want to be named agrees with her. “The implications of Taseer’s murder by a religiously motivated man will be significant and far-reaching for our society, where religious conservatism is rapidly increasing because of the silence of successive governments on the issue in the past,” he says.

In the days immediately following Taseer’s murder, leaders of Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan issued decrees against offering funeral prayers for Taseer or even expressing regret over his killing. Taking a cue from these statements, the khateeb of Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid and the imam of a mosque inside the Governor House, both government employees, refused to lead Taseer’s funeral prayers. A few weeks later, two senators refused to lead a prayer for the slain governor when the Senate met for the first time after his death. One of them, Professor Ibrahim, belongs to Jamaat-e-Islami while the other, Abdul Khaliq Peerzada, represents the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which prides itself on its liberal credentials. And when Islamabad-based CFD member Marvi Sirmed invited Senator Humayun Khan Mandokhel, an independent from Balochistan, to participate in a memorial service for Taseer, she received an alarming response. “[Taseer] met his fate. This is our religion. You have to accept it or leave Pakistan,” he told her.

Nor were ordinary citizens far behind. A group of lawyers cheered for Qadri and showered rose petals on him during his first appearance in an Islamabad court, and a number of rallies were taken out in various cities of Punjab by religious groups openly supporting him and his action. On social networking website Facebook, about 2,000 users hailed Qadri as a brave man willing to sacrifice everything to protect the honour of the Prophet of Islam, and that was before the group’s page was shut down. A large section of the media, particularly television channels, stopped far short of condemning the murderer and instead continued focusing on why Taseer was killed in the way that he was. Many regulars on talk shows and in newspapers’ opinion pages also focused on discussing the ‘crime’ he had committed by publicly supporting Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother condemned to death under the blasphemy law, rather than denouncing Qadri and his act. The advocates of amendments to or a repeal of the blasphemy law were painted negatively in the media, usually as intending blasphemers working on a foreign agenda to harm Islam and Muslims.

Urdu newspaper Ummat, for instance, translated an Observer article on former information minister Sherry Rehman, who has filed a bill to make amendments to the law, to imply that she had willingly and independently gone into exile in her home. This was emphasised several times in the translation despite the fact that the original article had described how threats against her life have been pouring in and the government has instructed her to provide a 48-hour notice before leaving home. Another Urdu newspaper mistranslated a New York Times article on Taseer by his daughter Shehrbano in such a way that she began to receive threats in response to it (the newspaper later fired the subeditor responsible for the translation).

“Religious intolerance has become a way of life for many of us in Pakistan,” says a Christian-rights activist who requested anonymity. “People are scared of speaking or writing on issues such as the shabby state of religious minorities in Pakistan. Taseer’s assassination will certainly add to the existing repressive atmosphere and make things more difficult for those who are working to realise the ideal of a tolerant, progressive society for all citizens of Pakistan,” he adds, saying the governor had won Christian hearts by espousing Aasia’s cause.

But even though Pakistani Christians feel strongly for Taseer and his family, they have not organised public events to pay tribute to him because they have been “advised against it”, he explains. “Church leaders don’t want the murder and their opposition to the blasphemy laws to be seen as a Christian-Muslim issue. That is why public displays of emotion on his death were avoided. We cannot afford to invite trouble. Our community has already lost a lot in violent attacks on its members and churches in Punjab and elsewhere in recent years.”

Civil society activists, Taseer’s friends and his close relatives have been able to organise candlelight vigils in Lahore, Islamabad and elsewhere in the country, and a handful of liberal politicians and human rights activists have spoken out on television talk shows in his favour. But that has been the extent of the public protest. “It is time for progressive elements to sit back and reconsider their strategy for countering the growing power of conservative forces in society, especially in the media, rather than indulge in any adventurism,” advises the analyst from Lahore. According to him, the most important task at hand for them is to see to it that Qadri is punished for taking the law into his own hands.

But it is unclear whether the state is powerful enough or has the courage to punish Taseer’s murderer. Police officers investigating the case are said to have received threats to their lives and the prosecution has been unable to find lawyers. “Few lawyers, if any, would want to represent the state in this case because of possible threats,” says an Islamabad-based reporter who has been covering the proceedings of Taseer murder case. He claims the majority of lawyers from the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, including those belonging to Punjab’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz, are supportive of Qadri, which prevents others from taking the risk of representing the prosecution. “Even the judiciary is scared of hearing the case for similar reasons and because of the active backing of Qadri and his instigators by religious parties and groups,” he adds.

More than anyone else, it is Taseer’s family that is facing a real threat, says a businessman close to them. They are said to be shunning any interaction with the domestic media for fear of stoking a new controversy. After the mistranslation of Shehrbano’s article, “they have decided to stay away from the media,” he confirms. Although they did not agree, he adds that “some people had even advised Taseer’s wife and children to quietly leave the country for some time and return when the issue is forgotten.” If Taseer’s assassination underscores anything, then, it is the Pakistani state’s increasing inability to take on extremist violence, and its helplessness in protecting those who differ from a narrow interpretation of religion that seems to be becoming mainstream.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: The ultimate time warp

Daily Times
Taha Najeeb Khan
February 19, 2011

Einstein would have benefited immensely from Pakistan if he were alive today. The time travel conundrum that consumed most of his scientific travails would have neatly unravelled itself to him. The constant grappling with complex math and speed of light modelling would have been rendered moot because, had he been alive today, he would have realised that you do not need to travel the speed of light to warp in time, you simply need a PIA flight to Pakistan. Needless to mention that this time travel would be backwards. But all satire aside, given the recent string of sordid episodes that have once again pushed Pakistan into international ignominy, would it be too outlandish to assert that we have a society with an arrested history?

If viewed in context, we are confronted with a vision of life that is frozen in a pre-scientific window. While the rest of the world is making inroads into cosmological and quantum realities, we are still actively engaged in pre-historic debates and 7th century disputes that the rest of human civilisation has left far behind. History tells us that the West has had its ample share of savagery, as the Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch trials would testify; however, it was precisely this diabolical character of the Vatican, which set the stage for European enlightenment.

The problem with Islam is that, historically, there has never been a central authority like the Vatican that could be confronted or tamed in the face of religious lunacy of the kind manifested in Pakistan today. This has allowed almost anyone with a big beard and a cult following to proclaim divine warrants for promiscuously issuing death verdicts against people whose only crime was freethinking. This also explains why Islam did not go through a similar reformation as its sister monotheistic faiths, as there was never any distinct body of beliefs and values that Muslims could identify with, let alone challenge. Pakistan is unfortunately an extreme incarnation of this phenomenon.

The central theme behind Pakistan’s creation was purportedly Islam, consequently reducing its ideological bearings to the fringes with no anchor point in the centre. The absence of a distinct ideological centre and a coherent system of values and principles almost invariably breeds a crisis of identity, the sort that exists in our society today. Notice that this phenomenon is antithetical to what we see in the developed world. Let us take the US as an example, where American principles and ideals are ceaselessly re-iterated everywhere, so that the American citizens remain cognizant of who they are and what they stand for (at least in theory). American ethos and principles were conceived by the most forward looking and progressive people of their time and their principles have remained uncontaminated by religious associations and ethnic/racial connections to this day. Indeed, it is these very ideals that have come to define American identity.

Even India, with its fantastically eclectic demographic realities, is another example, which has, through nationalism, with all its concomitant bearings, coupled with its indigenous values and culture, managed to establish a unique identity for its citizens. Compare this to Pakistan where there are no core principles that define us and no cultural clarity that identifies us. The only apparent unifying agency in this inchoate mix of identities is religion, but we all know that far from being cohesive, it has actually been the single most divisive element in the country’s history. The issue with drawing one’s identity and morality solely from religion is that religions are subjective and can be interpreted in several ways, which is why religion is best served as long it occupies one’s personal realm. This, unfortunately, has not been the case in Pakistan, where the convictions of a few and the ignorance of many has muddled our worldview to a very disturbing extent. Perhaps this is why our sense of identity and morality is obscure at best.

This has culminated in the following: 1) a perennial struggle to establish an identity by perpetually framing ourselves against a perceived enemy (imagined or exaggerated); 2) complete moral bankruptcy and nihilism; 3) a ubiquitous and all-prevailing sense of paranoia and a general discontent with the world; 4) a facile, and at times pernicious view of this life as an unnecessary and inconvenient encumbrance in the way of eternal ‘real’ life; 5) mass psychosis brought on by a pathological obsession with a mythical ‘glorious’ past and nursing apocalyptic ambitions for an imagined future; 6) intellectual paralysis and an unwavering commitment to resisting change/reform; 7) promoting a culture of death by exalting martyrdom as a desirable goal in this life — a peculiar case of solipsism that puts us at the centre of a scheming world that actively seeks to destroy us, and 8) a refusal to view the world with the aid of facts and a disinclination towards free-thinking and introspection.

As a society, assailed by the ravages of sinister cultism and dogmatism for decades, we find ourselves today at the mercy of vague interpretations of religious texts that can easily be distorted to advance the vile agendas of those who profit from obscuring the truth. This probably explains how a good number of people, not necessarily illiterate, could beatify Salmaan Taseer’s murderer or sociopaths of his kind. Clearly, such people are advertising themselves beyond reason and have completely absented themselves from rational discourse. It is exactly this mentality that is a curtain raiser to the sort of nihilistic worldview that has engulfed our imagination.

However, the younger generations in Pakistan are in fact gradually turning more moderate, especially now with the growing tide of globalisation that is fast reaching out to all corners of the world, and so we can hopefully expect the problem of religious fanaticism to taper off eventually — if not completely die out. But the problem is that, given our fantastically precarious geo-political reality, we simply do not have time on our side. So the only practical way to stem our extended death march is for moderates to make themselves heard by a concerted effort of organised media campaigns, textbook revisions and an unequivocal recognition of the malaise that has undone us all these years.

 

[RabzonKhan]

WASHINGTON DIARY: Pollution of religion

Daily Times
Dr Manzur Ejaz
February 23, 2011

Allama Iqbal himself probably did not appreciate the depth and practical dimension of his statement, “Deen-i-mullah fee sabeel Allah fasad” (the mullah’s religion is just creating frictions). And, when he preached that “Judaa ho deen siasat se to reh jati hai changezi” (if religion is separated from politics, it becomes barbarism), he was advocating being ruled by the mullahs. However, what he did not foresee was that mixing religion with politics would turn the socio-political discourse into the mullah’s domain, which would not bring anything but inter-sect conflicts, hatred and friction.

After daily repetition of “Judaa ho deen siasat se to reh jati hai changezi”, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) was able to massively infuse religion into politics. Additional help from the US for international jihad created the exact situation that Iqbal had implied in his poetry. There were thousands of shaheens (eagles) who wanted to run their horses into the Black Sea and beyond. These eagles ran their horses into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and all other pagan lands. But what has come of it all at the end of the day?

After heavily mixing doses of religion with politics, have we defeated the changezi (barbarism) system or have we, inadvertently, created just that? Just count the number of dead in suicide attacks and the destruction as a result of security operations against jihadi mullahs. Then, scan the religious landscape and see how many sects consider one another non-Muslims now, as opposed to before the Islamisation movement, how the poor non-Muslims have suffered under mullah shahi (rule of the clerics) and how social anarchy has wrecked Pakistani society.

Under the sway of mullah shahi, the rich and powerful have skimmed off the people with corruption and plundering. Some may ask what Islamisation has to do with corruption; the answer is that if two things happen simultaneously, there must be some correlation between them. In this case, the emergence of mullah shahi has changed societal priorities as allegations of blasphemy now become more important than discussing corruption and injustice. Have you seen any religious party demonstrating against the corruption of billions in almost every department?

By now it is clear that, most importantly, the spirit of religion has been polluted so much so that every sect considers the other as being non-Muslim. Instead of spiritually uplifting individuals, irrespective of their religion and sect, religion has been turned into a power game, a political circus. One can appreciate the wisdom of the founders of the US constitution, George Washington in particular, who argued that purity and spiritualism of religion can be maintained only by keeping it separate from politics. They wanted to save religion from trickeries, hypocrisies and the wheeling-dealing of politics. However, this point cannot be appreciated by our mullahs for whom religion is a profession as they have tasted the power of their political blackmailing.

The early proponents of secularist philosophy were the Sufis of the subcontinent who understood the dangers of the pollution of religion if it is mixed with politics. Therefore, on the one hand, they severely condemned the mullah’s profession and its damaging role in society and, on the other, they developed a strict policy, particularly the Chishtias, never to meet or relate to the royals. Their emphasis on a personal relationship with God or other deities was meant to eliminate the role of intermediaries, i.e. theocracy. Baba Farid and his disciple Nizamuddin are known to have refused to meet with the kings even when they were threatened with dire consequences.

These Sufis did not further any overt political agenda by design and emphasised the universal humanistic values that can create a better society. Like George Washington, they wanted to preserve the religious spiritualism of every religion. They knew this could be done only if they preached irrespective of religious denominations.

However, the tradition was diverse. The Chishtia were anti-establishment and the Bahauddin-led Suharwardia (headed by Shah Mahmood Qureshi these days) were pro the Delhi kings. Both schools adhered to the basic tenants of Islam, i.e. praying five times and performing all other mandatory Islamic duties. Wahabi propaganda that said the Sufis were bhangi charsi (drug addicts) had and has no basis. Only the Malamtia sect to whom Shah Hussain belonged was against the entire ambit of ritualistic religion. Shah Hussain’s pre-condition for initiation (mureedi) was to drink alcohol and shave the beard, moustaches, head hair and even eyebrows. In most cases, many were just intellectuals and thinkers following a certain mode of life that resembled Sufism. Many of us confuse the great classical Punjabi poets with the Sufi tradition.

By the end of the 18th or 19th century, the Sufi movement had come to a close and what were left were the rituals of the Barelvi mullahs and sajjada nasheens (holders of the saintly seat). The Sufi tradition could only survive in a multi-religious society, which Punjab and Sindh had before 1947. The purging of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan created an anti-Sufi environment. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that the followers of the Sufis, namely the Barelvis, have become just like the Wahabi and Deobandi maulvis. They could not avoid the dictates of the environment they lived in. In contrast, the Barelvis in India are much more tolerant of other religions because they have to live with them. More Hindus visit the Ajmer shrine of Moeenuddin Chishti than Muslims.

As a matter of fact, the Barelvis had abandoned the Sufi tradition long ago. They had become a ritualistic sect that considered khatam darood (rituals) as their basic distinction. The Sufi shrines had become the jagirs (estates) of sajjada nashins who were running them like feudal dynasties. This trend had started much earlier in history. Baba Farid and his ilk had refused to see kings and their men but his great grandsons joined the Tughlaqs and were awarded a huge estate in Pakpattan. It was a noteworthy estate when Ranjeet Singh conquered Punjab and he had to negotiate with the then sajjada nasheen.

 

[RabzonKhan]

My disappointment with Pakistan

By Sehar Tariq
February 22, 2011

The writer works for the Jinnah Institute, a public-policy think-tank based in Islamabad

Just two years ago, lawyers, political parties, civil society activists and students were marching to establish the rule of law in Pakistan. We, as a country, stood united behind the belief that the law must take due course and the rule of law must reign supreme. We promised not to bow down to the pressures of dictators or external forces. But today, those who stood on the frontlines and made these promises are nowhere to be found to condemn a man who scorned the rule of law, broke sworn oaths of duty and murdered a man.

I am confused and angry. A murderer has been crowned a hero and the man he slaughtered is the villain. I am told a murderer of this ilk proudly walks down every street of Pakistan, waiting to slay anyone he, in his own head, accuses, tries and convicts of blaspheming. There are scores who will defend and glorify him. Then there are those who will sit in their drawing rooms and say the murderer shouldn’t be glorified, but the victim was asking for it. They will then tell you that Pakistan is a failed state, spiralling into the abyss of religious fanaticism. Some will incite you to take to the streets against the illiterate cleric propagating intolerance and violence. Others will invite you to a candlelight vigil or a Facebook group. Here they will collectively wish they could swat the mullahs back into their caves with their Prada bags.

The bloodlust and hysteria of the masses that cheered the governor’s assassin has me mourning for the flight of reason, tolerance and the rule of law from this country. The small band of people advocating that liberals confront this blood-thirsty mob in the streets has me worried for their sanity.

Dramatic? Sure.

That’s how I’ve felt since the assassination of Salmaan Taseer.

I’ve tried to write many times since it happened. Maybe it’s not the words hiding from me but me hiding from the words that will spell out in cold, indelible ink, what Pakistan has become.

Escapist? Sure.

You have to be one if you want to live in a country where 500 lawyers will sign a petition to defend the murderer, but not one will prosecute him for the crime he has proudly confessed to. You have to become an escapist when those leading the charge against intolerance are busy being intolerant of each other.

I’ve thought about writing a response, but I’ve never found the words to criticise those who do much more for this cause than I ever will.

Coward? Sure.

I’m not the only one. There are hordes of us lurking in the editorial pages of English dailies. Our pens churning out clever little eulogies for the country lost, preaching sermons of realism, hiding our cowardice under the garb of ‘reality’. Some of us have been to a protest or two for a ‘tolerant’ Pakistan, but that’s all we’ve done.

What more could we have done in the face of such violent opposition? I don’t know.

But we could have found one lawyer to represent the Taseer family. One man or woman to stand up for the rule of law, in a country that just experienced a great movement in its name, should not have to be such a tough ask.

Sad? Infinitely.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23rd, 2011.

 

[RabzonKhan]

This ‘ghairat’ business

By Khaled Ahmed

The writer is a director at the South Asia Free Media Association, Lahore

Ex-foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi echoed many TV anchors when he appealed to ‘qaumi viqar’, (national honour) as he disclosed why he had disagreed with the assertion by the US that the American killer Raymond Davis enjoyed blanket immunity as a diplomat.

This meant that the argument was not only legal. It had to be upheld also, in the face of a superpower, if Pakistan was to retain its honour. Could he have said what he said if Pakistan was not a weak state? In Socratic terms, he wanted the weak state to assert its honour in the face of a hegemon. Honour, it seems, compensates for the feeling of subordination felt by the weak. On the other hand, wisdom seems to conceal weakness through strategies of survival.

Honour is held up by high principle and inflexibility; wisdom is the seeking of a middle ground through a flexible response. Honour is isolationist and non-communicative because of its readiness to fight ‘against all odds’; wisdom is a process of reconciliation and pursuit of agreement through communication. Honour is idealistic; wisdom is pragmatic. The high point of honour is martyrdom; the high point of wisdom is survival.

The above categorisation is a hermetic formulation. In any human condition, there is always a middle ground of intermixture of categories. Examples of honour and wisdom abound in history, including in our Islamic history. The second imam, Hasan, accepted the caliphate of Muawiya in an act of wisdom; the third imam, Husain, defended high principle and opposed the caliphate of Muawiya’s son, Yazid. This was an act of honour culminating in martyrdom.

In his book The End of History, Francis Fukuyama’s heroic ‘first man’ who fought for honour was taken from Plato’s Republic. Socrates explained how defence of honour created great tragedy and elevated man. Socrates himself preferred to die in the cause of high principle when he could have saved his life. Much later, Galileo, facing the Inquisition in Rome, chose to sign the church doctrine that the earth was flat and save his life. That was wisdom.

The great sixth imam, Jafar Sadiq, developed the doctrine of ‘quietism’ and saved Shiism as the ‘faith of the downtrodden’. In today’s vulgar parlance, it can be called a ‘lie low’ policy. This was wisdom, adding a second important but parallel (to martyrdom) strand in Shia thought. Mansur Hallaj could have saved his life when faced with torture in Baghdad but he chose high principle like Socrates and was martyred. Honour is rated higher in national memory than wisdom. Wisdom (hikmat) appears to be the opposite of honour (ghairat).

In their internal behaviour, states have governance in accordance with laws. In international affairs there is no governance. States, therefore, formulate ‘policy’ to engage outside their borders. Inside, it is governance that is needed; outside, it is ‘policy’ that is required. Nationalism, if it lasts, embodies a nation’s sense of honour and, like honour, is related to war and martyrdom.

However, if nationalism stands for honour, the national economy stands for wisdom. If nationalism cannot abide analysis, the economy demands constant analytical review. Because of its fundamental principle of ‘rational choice’, the economic function also brings forth the element of rationality in wisdom.

The economy wants peace at all costs and will countenance no war, just or unjust. It will not function under isolationism which is a characteristic of honour. In this sense, the national economy is a ‘dishonourable’ enterprise. Honour is prized in tribal societies more than in urbanised societies. It is also a trait of the low-literacy populations, mainly, because of its requirement of emotion rather than reason.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27th, 2011.

 

[RabzonKhan]

VIEW: How many secular people will you kill?

Daily Times
Dr Irfan Zafar
March 01, 2011

Salmaan Taseer was a prominent businessman and politician who served as the governor of Punjab from May 15, 2008 until his assassination in Islamabad on January 4, 2011 by his own security guard, who disagreed with Taseer’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Salmaan Taseer was born into an affluent family of intellectuals. His father, Dr Muhammad Din Taseer, was a close friend of Allama Iqbal and was the first person from the subcontinent who obtained a doctorate in English Literature from Cambridge University. His mother, Christobel Bilqis Taseer, was an Englishwoman and the sister of British-born writer Alys Faiz, the wife of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Salmaan Taseer received his early education at St Anthony’s High School and Government College in Lahore and then went on to obtain a degree in chartered accountancy from London. Taseer started his political career as a member of Z A Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the late 1960s and it finally reached its zenith when on May 15, 2008, he was designated for the office of governor of Punjab. He is the author of a political biography on Bhutto titled Bhutto: A Political Biography. Apart from being a politician, he was a successful businessman who set up chartered accountancy and management consultancy firms, a full service brokerage house, WorldCall group (a major private sector telecom operator), a news channel, and a children’s channel. He was also the publisher of an English and an Urdu language newspaper.

One of Taseer’s bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, disagreed with his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and shot him 27 times with a submachine gun. Qadri’s father, a vegetable seller with no educational background or intellectual orientation, is a resident of Muslim Town. Malik Mumtaz Qadri holds a C grade higher secondary school certificate. He was associated with Dawat-e-Islami, a religious organisation associated with the Barelvi movement of Sunni Islam. In the 1990s and 2000s, sporadic violence resulted from disputes over control of Pakistani mosques between the Barelvis and Deobandis (another Islamic sect) and in April 2007, Sunni Tehreek activists attempted to forcibly gain control of a mosque in Karachi, opening fire on the mosque and those inside, resulting in death and injuries.

So here we have a brainwashed illiterate fanatic vegetable seller’s son extinguishing a bright intellectual by interpreting the religion and passing a judgement on the faith of another human being. This itself is against the very teachings of the Holy Quran, which says: “God is the only One who can judge humans” (46:9). The only crime Mr Taseer seems to have committed was that he appealed for the pardon of a Christian Pakistani woman, Aasia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy by a law which, according to him, needed an ‘improvement’ (not scrapping) so that it could not be used by people for their personal motives to punish their opponents. Is the state’s tolerance towards all the minority faiths not part of our religion, as clearly mentioned in the following verses of the Holy Quran; “Had God willed, they had not been idolatrous. We have not set thee as a keeper over them, nor art thou responsible for them” (6:107), “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) and “Do not revile those unto whom they pray beside God, lest they wrongfully revile God through ignorance” (6:108).

As if the barbaric act of an uneducated man was not enough, the same misguided understanding of the religion by the clerics came in the form of chief cleric of the Badshahi Mosque refusing to lead the funeral prayer of Salmaan Taseer. Not much of a surprise, as Bulleh Shah, a Punjabi Sufi poet, a humanist and philosopher, was denied a funeral by the religious orthodoxy (clerics) of his time.

This all comes down to the basics that Pakistan was conceived as a secular state by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Most of the people somehow wrongly believe that the meaning of secular is “not pertaining to or connected with religion” or equate secularism with atheism or anti-Islamism or anarchy. Secular Pakistan means a state that neither supports nor opposes any religion. Everyone is equal, i.e. it does not only belong to the Muslims but also to Hindus, Christians, atheists and other minorities. We are all Pakistanis first.

Pakistan’s founders were not clerics and fanatics, but poets and secularists. In fact, most of the religious parties were against the creation of Pakistan. We grew up with our official documents having the name of the new nation as ‘Republic of Pakistan’. However, with the passage of time because of politico-religious compulsions, the original name conceived by the father of the nation was changed to ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. Does the name of a person depict what his religion is? Do we have to add Muslim, Christian or Hindu as an attachment to one’s name to show our religious inclination? The answer is a simple ‘no’. The same goes for the state, which cannot be categorised or labelled on the basis of religion. More importantly, it should be on the basis of the humans living in that particular land. ‘Islamising’ the name sowed the seeds of religious frictions, which has ultimately resulted in the present state of affairs in the country where killing human beings using religion as a weapon has become a norm. Look at the plight of Islam now, where there is a focus only on trivial issues such as whether the hijab or burqa should be worn or not. The real issues like the need for education and learning, as laid down in the Quran and the hadith, seem to have been forgotten.

Politics and religion do not go together, a fact our exploited, uneducated masses fail to comprehend. Similarly, someone’s faith is not something physical that can be eliminated by bullets or silenced by threats. What needs to be understood is that there can be causes worth dying for, but there cannot be any worth killing for. How many secular people will you kill? There will be one born in every house.

The writer is a social activist.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: A passport to dystopia?

Daily Times
Dr Mohammad Taqi
March 03, 2011

When Samuel Huntington and Warren Manshel co-founded the Foreign Policy magazine (FP) in 1970, they felt that “in the light of Vietnam, the basic purposes of American foreign policy demand re-examination and redefinition”. They pledged to do so through “an effort to stimulate rational discussion of the new directions required in American foreign policy”. They described their vision in their first editorial dated January 1, 1971:

“Our goal is a journal of foreign policy which is serious but not scholarly, lively but not glib, and critical without being negative. And we frankly hope that the discussions of these issues in our pages will affect the actions, or at least the thinking, of those in government, academia, business or elsewhere who shape our foreign policy.”

FP has since gone through many phases, editors and management, but has more or less stuck to the original vision of a lively yet serious debate. Even those of us who have never subscribed to Huntington and FP’s US-centric view of the history and future, considered the periodical a sober entity — well, up until last week.

On February 25, 2011 an article titled ‘The Islamic Republic of Talibanisation’, by Professor Saleem Hassan Ali of the University of Vermont, was published online by FP in its section titled “Argument”. The gist of Professor Ali’s outlandish theory is that having failed to rout the Taliban in Afghanistan through military means, the US should somehow arrange for a referendum to be held in Afghanistan and several adjoining parts of Pakistan, in which people would opt for an Islamic emirate under the Taliban rule. If and when such a referendum is successful, the people of Afghanistan and Waziristan subscribing to the Taliban worldview can immigrate to this autonomous emirate. The US and its allies would have to make sure that this entity is encapsulated from the surroundings so as to prevent export of violence but would be induced to trade with the neighbours and encouraged to “try its hand at governing”, which shall eventually result in everyone and their uncle living happily ever after.

Reading the 1360-word piece left me scratching my head. Was this a tongue-in-cheek swipe at both the Taliban and the regional and world powers? I wondered if some political fiction had gone totally haywire. Is this what Huntington and Manshel had meant by serious, rational and lively debate, without being negative? But reading the comment section underneath the article one could almost hear the Twilight Zone music playing: Professor Ali in his responses to a barrage of criticism appeared to be seriously defending an atrociously glib thesis!

Making a case for a fundamental change in the western and US strategy to cope with the Taliban’s ‘staying power in Afghanistan’, Professor Ali starts with a frontal assault on the Pashtun nation itself. In an utter disregard for the history of the region, he writes: “The fact is that the Taliban and other Islamist elements are popular in the region out of which they operate, the Pashtun tribal belt between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This has always been an utterly conservative locale where the local population has generally favoured Islamic fundamentalism. Even going back to the 1930s, Waziristan’s rallying flag against the British was a simple white calligraphic ‘Allah-Akbar’ (God is Great) on red fabric.”

Well, the fact is that Professor Ali has taken serious liberties with the facts and has tried to denigrate the Pashtuns by portraying them as a people inherently incapable of living under a democratic dispensation. He simply ignores the secular-democratic Khudai Khidmatgar Movement (KKM) that dominated the Pashtun polity in the first half of the 20th century. He then mentions the doctored elections of the 2002, stating: “In Pakistan’s frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamists were freely elected into power in one recent election.” However, cherry-picking the history, he skips the electoral rout of these same Islamist political parties at the hands of the secular Awami National Party (a continuation of the KKM) in 2008 elections that were widely accepted as free and fair. And even before that, the Pashtuns of the tribal belt have elected people with impeccable secular credentials like Abdul Lateef Afridi (Khyber), Shahabuddin Khan (Bajaur) and Dr Javed Hussain (Kurram) in various national assembly elections.

Professor Ali quotes a New America Foundation poll, which had suggested that the majority in Waziristan opposes the west’s military presence and that the parties (JI, JUI, PTI) with Islamist inclinations would gain almost half of the votes in a free and open election. Ironic that an article published under the section “Argument” would have a deductive fallacy bigger than the Hoover Dam: most Waziris despise foreign presence while all Taliban fight the foreigners, therefore the Waziris want to be ruled by the Taliban!

But this is not it. The article lectures the geopolitical strategists to seriously consider a canton under the Taliban where they may be free to flog and maim people. Professor Ali writes: “Although the west and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been terrified by the spectre of a second Islamic republic, there is a way to mitigate the threat: the creation of a semiautonomous region where Islamists can exercise their draconian system of law — if that is what the people agree to impose upon themselves.” In the most blatant manner Professor Ali not only blames the victim but also expects that the Pashtuns of FATA, held hostage by the armed mercenaries and their masters in Rawalpindi, will somehow vote freely in a fair referendum.

Pashtuns are outraged at FP for allowing its pages to be used not just to disparage a proud people but also to propose creating a terrorist haven. FP calls its flagship blog, ‘Passport’. But with this new low in geopolitical discourse it seems more like a passport to a barbarian dystopia, where new techniques of torture and terror would be perfected.

Sam Huntington had said in an NPR interview: “I think clearly the US, as well as other western nations, should stand by their commitments to human rights and democracy and should try to influence other to move in that direction.” This is precisely what Barack Obama has decided to do in the rapidly unravelling situation in the Arab world. But apparently, Professor Ali has opted to stand on the wrong side of not just the Pashtuns but also the history itself. As for FP, it ought to revisit its first editorial.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Howl at the moon

By Khurram Husain
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2011.

Man cannot live by grievance alone. If you nurture a grudge for long enough, eventually it takes over and starts to nurture you. That’s what happened to North Korea and that is what the likes of Shireen Mazari and Zaid Hamid, and the entire loony brigade, will turn our country into if we give them a chance.

There are a few basket case countries in this world that are built around the idea that everything that comes from the outside world is laced with sinister purpose, and Pakistan will join their ranks if we don’t get a handle on this growing schizophrenia in our national discourse.

Hafiz Saeed threatens India to “release our water, or we will draw blood.” Somebody should tell him that this is not the language in which water disputes are usually resolved. I know we have a grudge over the damming of the Chenab. I know we have a grievance over the ‘flaws’ in the Indus Water Treaty. But seriously, if Israel and Syria, Turkey and Iraq can have water sharing agreements, there is no reason why India and Pakistan can’t, preferably without screaming about blood.

Shireen Mazari thinks that America is trying to destabilise Pakistan. Yes, she thinks this is to create the pretext to invade our country and seize our nuclear assets. In Pyongyang they have very similar ideas, and look at where it got them! But really now, if America was indeed that determined to seize our nuclear assets my guess is they wouldn’t dilly-dally for all these years by sponsoring sporadic bombing campaigns and feeding a ragtag separatist movement in Balochistan. My guess is they’d just do it.

When they were determined to attack and invade Iraq, it took less than one year to cut through the international formalities and get the US Army past the ‘line of departure.’ Of course, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in DC now who thinks it was a great idea to invade Iraq and even fewer who think it would be a great idea to repeat the experience with nuclear-armed Pakistan. In Islamabad though, I’m told people with these views are a dime a dozen, with Madam Mazari perched atop this silly choir.

Zaid Hamid thinks the world is united against us, but we’ll give them a good trouncing when they come for us. Yes, with unity in our ranks we will overcome all world conspiracies to rob us off our manhood, he says. I believe Qaddafi said something very similar to his diminishing band of loyalists before he ordered the African mercenaries to open fire on his countrymen. I do believe Qaddafi and Zaid Hamid share the same mental condition. The colonel’s fiery speech a few days ago, denouncing Nescafe and bin Laden in the same breath, brought that home. We have mad men in our country who make speeches like that, don’t we?

And the madness goes on and on. Every day some other lunatic is to be found on TV, talking about some variation of these themes. But where does this kind of talk take us? Hafiz Saeed wants that we should be like Somalia, armed to the teeth, but bereft of ideas. Shireen Mazari wants to take us to North Korea, with her radioactive brand of muscular paranoia. And Zaid Hamid wants to be a dangerously charismatic demagogue like Qaddafi.

But my fear is that we’ll end up with a little bit of each and a whole lot of none. A lunacy all our own. Armed to the teeth and bereft of ideas we already are. All we need now is to surrender to our cruder instincts, roar with defiance at the slightest provocation, test fire a ballistic missile every week, oil a nuke or two in broad daylight in full view of the satellites from time to time, and leave everybody guessing about what the heck we’re going to do next. And sitting atop it all will be the bipolar madman, the demagogue with trademark headgear who gives nine-hour long speeches denouncing the West and the East, the North and the South, swears at the sun at dawn and howls at the moon at night. Let the good times roll!

 

[RabzonKhan]

EDITORIAL: A bloodstained flag

Daily Times
March 04, 2011

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks on Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti’s assassination echoed what every sane Pakistani feels. “I was shocked and outraged by the assassination...I think this was an attack not only on one man but on the values of tolerance and respect for people of all faiths and backgrounds that had been championed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan,” she said. On Wednesday, Pakistan lost Mr Bhatti to the extremist forces. In two months, we have lost a serving governor and a serving federal minister. This is certainly not the Pakistan our forefathers dreamt of. It has been hijacked by the very same forces that were once against the creation of this country. Mr Bhatti’s assassination has been condemned worldwide and has sent shockwaves everywhere, especially in Pakistan.

The reaction to Governor Taseer’s murder was shocking for another reason as most Pakistanis were either ambivalent or glorified his murderer, Mumtaz Qadri. But Mr Bhatti’s murder has put most of those voices on the defensive. The religious parties are not condoning Mr Bhatti’s murder like they did in Mr Taseer’s case but are blaming it on an “international conspiracy” to take the focus away from the Raymond Davis case. This is too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Instead of shifting the blame, all those who are drumming up this theory should take a good look around this ‘land of the pure’ and they will get to see the evidence of an inside hand themselves. The Punjab Taliban themselves claimed the responsibility for this callous attack on Mr Bhatti. In pamphlets left at the site of the murder, the ‘Taliban al Qaeda Punjab’ warned of sinister consequences for anyone who dared to raise their voice against the blasphemy laws.

It was surprising to see Punjab Chief Minister all riled up at Interior Minister Rehman Malik for ‘politicising’ the Punjabi Taliban issue and giving it a provincial angle. What Mr Sharif has obviously failed to understand is that Mr Malik is not fanning provincialism. The perpetrators themselves signed the pamphlets as such and later claimed responsibility as well. This is not the time for a tussle between the federal and Punjab government; it is time to stand united in order to root out the terrorist menace. All provinces and the federation have to pull together because the terrorists are now attacking political figures. It seems that the terrorists now have a hit list on the blasphemy issue. For once our politicians must rise above partisan politics and understand the gravity of the situation. The terrorists have the capability to inflict damage and pain by killing political leaders at will.

In another sad development, leading members of Pakistan’s Christian community have asked the Vatican not to give statements on their behalf. It shows the insecurity of our minorities who feel threatened that any international condemnation, especially that coming from the Vatican, might serve as fodder for the Islamist extremists who are baying for their blood in any case. The government needs to put its foot down and assure all minority communities that they are safe in Pakistan. This is as much their country as the Muslims’. President Zardari said, “We have to fight this mindset and defeat them. We will not be intimidated nor will we retreat.” Had the government stood up against the extremist forces earlier instead of trying to appease them, the terrorists would not have gained so much space. But as they say, better late than never. The government should now stand firm and challenge the extremist forces in order to defeat them. Our survival is on the line here.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: Murder most foul

Daily Times
Shahid Saeed
March 04, 2011

Abdicating responsibility and state power by agreeing to the demands of men of evil that block our streets to celebrate the murderer of a brave man who stood up for a poor Christian farmhand is what we have been doing. Of the politicians who stood up for Aasia Noreen, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti are no more

“I am ready to die for a cause, I am living for my community...and I will die to defend their rights...I will prefer to die for my principles,” said Shahbaz Bhatti in a video floated on the internet, filmed apparently some four months ago.

When I was nine years old, like most other children I spent all the day with friends from the neighbourhood cycling and playing cricket. Faraz and Aneeq, brothers roughly my age, were prominent members of the small gang of friends and brilliant batsmen. One summer day, news broke out that they were Christians. I knew little about how to react and I remained a silent spectator as my group of so-called friends expelled them from the group, ultimately stopped talking to them altogether and finally isolated them in the small colony that we lived in. Their father was a serving Lieutenant Colonel in the Pakistan Army and their only crime was that they were Christians. Nine-year-old children already knew enough to hate friendly and happy-going people of other faiths based just on their religion. Little did I know that the country I was growing up in was far more discriminatory, contemptuous and jaundiced with bigotry and fanaticism. Two days ago, its land became even more bloody with the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti.

Pakistanis, often drowning in delusion and grandeur, boast our modernist and progressive credentials by claiming that unlike India we do not have a caste system. Sadly, that is a myth and utterly fallacious. Besides social inequality that drives wedges in our society, a form of apartheid exists on the basis of religion. Hindus in Pakistan are discriminated against and remain stuck in the worst of economic conditions, besides being forced into conversions. Ahmedis cannot even proclaim their religion openly and are murdered in broad daylight round the year. Jews just ran away from this country knowing what was in store for them. Christians, Pakistan’s second largest minority, are discriminated against and killed in the name of blasphemy laws. They are called “choorraas” (sweepers) and are subjected to the worst form of abuse. They are considered unclean and they are forced into jobs that Muslims feel are below their dignity. Janitor, cleaner and sanitary worker — that is what the Pakistani Christian has been told is his or her worth. A couple of years ago, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had put up a banner on the Islamabad Expressway inviting the Christian biradari (community) to apply for janitorial jobs at the CDA, openly stating as if these were jobs reserved for them in a shameful, abominable and disgusting show of behaviour from the state itself.

Pakistan’s Christians have given more to this country than this country has given to them. From Wing Commander Cecil Chaudhry (Sitara-e-Jurat, Tamgha-e-Jurat), who protected the airspace of this country, to Air Vice Marshall Michael John O’Brian, from the melodic Benjamin Sisters to the great human rights and peace activist Julius Salik, from A Nayyar whose melodious rendition of “Utho meri duniya” remains one of the best recitations of Iqbal, to Iqbal Masih, the young boy who broke the shackles of bonded labour and became a global symbol of hope, from Wing Commander Mervyn Middlecoat (Sitara-e-Jurat, Sitara-e-Basalat) to Ruth Pfau, Hilal-e-Pakistan, the legendary woman who has fought leprosy in this country, to Air Commodore W³adys³aw Józef Marian Turowicz — the man who headed SUPARCO in its days of glory and the father of our space and missile programme. The list goes on and includes great men like Bishop Anthony Lobo, Bishop John Joseph, Justice A R Corenlius, Air Vice Marshall Eric Hall (Hilal-i-Jurat, Sitar-e-Jurat), Joseph Francis, the great photo-journalist F E Chaudhary, GoC 23 Div Major General Noel Israel Khokar, and countless others besides the hundreds of great teachers who have, continue to, and will go on to further enlighten students at the historically magnificent missionary and convent schools in this country.

When a man convinced to kill innocents struck at the Islamic International University (IIU) in Islamabad, it was another Pakistani Christian who sacrificed his life to save many others. Pervez Masih blocked the path of the human bomb and sacrificed his life to save dozens, if not hundreds, of female students. A poor janitor, like many of his fellow community members, he had worked at the IIU for only a week. He made the ultimate sacrifice to protect his fellow Pakistanis and yet his community continues to be harassed, exploited, discriminated against, murdered and haunted by the memory of their loved ones consumed by the hydra-headed demon of extremism, militancy and fanaticism.

It has been 14 years since the massacre of Shantinagar and just two years ago Gojra’s Christian community saw their homes and churches burnt down by the forces of evil. Shahbaz Bhatti stood by them as he stood by Aasia Bibi.

How can we even begin to face the families of Mervyn Middlecoat? How can we even face Cecil Chaudhry? The family of Pervez Masih? Bishop John Joseph shot himself with a handgun to protest the blasphemy laws at the spot where a victim of the blasphemy laws, Ayub Masih, had been killed. Little has changed since his death in 1998 and perhaps little will. Our sins are too big to be absolved. Not even the most forgiving and compassionate of humans would pardon them.

Cowing down in front of extremism or being apologetic on their demands is what we have been doing. Abdicating responsibility and state power by agreeing to the demands of men of evil that block our streets to celebrate the murderer of a brave man who stood up for a poor Christian farmhand is what we have been doing. Of the politicians who stood up for Aasia Noreen, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti are no more. Sherry Rehman is under virtual house arrest having been told by the Interior Minister that she better leave the country — and later he went on to express his desire to extra-judicially murder blasphemers in order to prove his credentials too.

We are so insecure as a nation that we undercount our minority populations in our census. We have become a country ruled by mobs, by angry men who preach hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and irrationality. We cannot coexist peacefully until these madmen are taken to task, legally, for spreading messages of hate. Rest assured, things are looking extremely bleak and Shahbaz Bhatti will be just another victim in our bloodstained history. Our all-consuming, self-righteous and fire-breathing media was back to regular programming within two hours of his coldblooded assassination. That is the level of respect and honour that a brave, patriotic and great Pakistani deserved from our 24-hour news channels. We shall continue to blame the Yanks, the Indians and every other force for our own machinations whilst our Christians, Hindus, Shias and Sunnis, men and women and even children are murdered in our land.

Rest in peace (RIP) Shahbaz Bhatti. This country did not deserve you or any of the great Christian citizens whom any other country would have boasted of as sons of the soil. I do not know where Faraz or Aneeq are today. I am ashamed of how I did not move — even though I genuinely felt bad about it and knew it was wrong — as they were repugnantly expelled from the playground for their faith. I have nothing but my sincere apologies to offer them. I should have been vocal about intolerance. I can do little to heal the wounds of Shahbaz Bhatti’s family and his community. I just hope this home of ours does not go up in flames soon.

 

[muse]

Yes, yes, we know what has become of us -- What is it that we can do about it?? Who can put an end to this?

 

[Karachiite]

COMMENT: Murder most foul

Daily Times
Shahid Saeed
March 04, 2011

Abdicating responsibility and state power by agreeing to the demands of men of evil that block our streets to celebrate the murderer of a brave man who stood up for a poor Christian farmhand is what we have been doing. Of the politicians who stood up for Aasia Noreen, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti are no more

“I am ready to die for a cause, I am living for my community...and I will die to defend their rights...I will prefer to die for my principles,” said Shahbaz Bhatti in a video floated on the internet, filmed apparently some four months ago.

When I was nine years old, like most other children I spent all the day with friends from the neighbourhood cycling and playing cricket. Faraz and Aneeq, brothers roughly my age, were prominent members of the small gang of friends and brilliant batsmen. One summer day, news broke out that they were Christians. I knew little about how to react and I remained a silent spectator as my group of so-called friends expelled them from the group, ultimately stopped talking to them altogether and finally isolated them in the small colony that we lived in. Their father was a serving Lieutenant Colonel in the Pakistan Army and their only crime was that they were Christians. Nine-year-old children already knew enough to hate friendly and happy-going people of other faiths based just on their religion. Little did I know that the country I was growing up in was far more discriminatory, contemptuous and jaundiced with bigotry and fanaticism. Two days ago, its land became even more bloody with the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti.

Pakistanis, often drowning in delusion and grandeur, boast our modernist and progressive credentials by claiming that unlike India we do not have a caste system. Sadly, that is a myth and utterly fallacious. Besides social inequality that drives wedges in our society, a form of apartheid exists on the basis of religion. Hindus in Pakistan are discriminated against and remain stuck in the worst of economic conditions, besides being forced into conversions. Ahmedis cannot even proclaim their religion openly and are murdered in broad daylight round the year. Jews just ran away from this country knowing what was in store for them. Christians, Pakistan’s second largest minority, are discriminated against and killed in the name of blasphemy laws. They are called “choorraas” (sweepers) and are subjected to the worst form of abuse. They are considered unclean and they are forced into jobs that Muslims feel are below their dignity. Janitor, cleaner and sanitary worker — that is what the Pakistani Christian has been told is his or her worth. A couple of years ago, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had put up a banner on the Islamabad Expressway inviting the Christian biradari (community) to apply for janitorial jobs at the CDA, openly stating as if these were jobs reserved for them in a shameful, abominable and disgusting show of behaviour from the state itself.

Pakistan’s Christians have given more to this country than this country has given to them. From Wing Commander Cecil Chaudhry (Sitara-e-Jurat, Tamgha-e-Jurat), who protected the airspace of this country, to Air Vice Marshall Michael John O’Brian, from the melodic Benjamin Sisters to the great human rights and peace activist Julius Salik, from A Nayyar whose melodious rendition of “Utho meri duniya” remains one of the best recitations of Iqbal, to Iqbal Masih, the young boy who broke the shackles of bonded labour and became a global symbol of hope, from Wing Commander Mervyn Middlecoat (Sitara-e-Jurat, Sitara-e-Basalat) to Ruth Pfau, Hilal-e-Pakistan, the legendary woman who has fought leprosy in this country, to Air Commodore W³adys³aw Józef Marian Turowicz — the man who headed SUPARCO in its days of glory and the father of our space and missile programme. The list goes on and includes great men like Bishop Anthony Lobo, Bishop John Joseph, Justice A R Corenlius, Air Vice Marshall Eric Hall (Hilal-i-Jurat, Sitar-e-Jurat), Joseph Francis, the great photo-journalist F E Chaudhary, GoC 23 Div Major General Noel Israel Khokar, and countless others besides the hundreds of great teachers who have, continue to, and will go on to further enlighten students at the historically magnificent missionary and convent schools in this country.

When a man convinced to kill innocents struck at the Islamic International University (IIU) in Islamabad, it was another Pakistani Christian who sacrificed his life to save many others. Pervez Masih blocked the path of the human bomb and sacrificed his life to save dozens, if not hundreds, of female students. A poor janitor, like many of his fellow community members, he had worked at the IIU for only a week. He made the ultimate sacrifice to protect his fellow Pakistanis and yet his community continues to be harassed, exploited, discriminated against, murdered and haunted by the memory of their loved ones consumed by the hydra-headed demon of extremism, militancy and fanaticism.

It has been 14 years since the massacre of Shantinagar and just two years ago Gojra’s Christian community saw their homes and churches burnt down by the forces of evil. Shahbaz Bhatti stood by them as he stood by Aasia Bibi.

How can we even begin to face the families of Mervyn Middlecoat? How can we even face Cecil Chaudhry? The family of Pervez Masih? Bishop John Joseph shot himself with a handgun to protest the blasphemy laws at the spot where a victim of the blasphemy laws, Ayub Masih, had been killed. Little has changed since his death in 1998 and perhaps little will. Our sins are too big to be absolved. Not even the most forgiving and compassionate of humans would pardon them.

Cowing down in front of extremism or being apologetic on their demands is what we have been doing. Abdicating responsibility and state power by agreeing to the demands of men of evil that block our streets to celebrate the murderer of a brave man who stood up for a poor Christian farmhand is what we have been doing. Of the politicians who stood up for Aasia Noreen, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti are no more. Sherry Rehman is under virtual house arrest having been told by the Interior Minister that she better leave the country — and later he went on to express his desire to extra-judicially murder blasphemers in order to prove his credentials too.

We are so insecure as a nation that we undercount our minority populations in our census. We have become a country ruled by mobs, by angry men who preach hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and irrationality. We cannot coexist peacefully until these madmen are taken to task, legally, for spreading messages of hate. Rest assured, things are looking extremely bleak and Shahbaz Bhatti will be just another victim in our bloodstained history. Our all-consuming, self-righteous and fire-breathing media was back to regular programming within two hours of his coldblooded assassination. That is the level of respect and honour that a brave, patriotic and great Pakistani deserved from our 24-hour news channels. We shall continue to blame the Yanks, the Indians and every other force for our own machinations whilst our Christians, Hindus, Shias and Sunnis, men and women and even children are murdered in our land.

Rest in peace (RIP) Shahbaz Bhatti. This country did not deserve you or any of the great Christian citizens whom any other country would have boasted of as sons of the soil. I do not know where Faraz or Aneeq are today. I am ashamed of how I did not move — even though I genuinely felt bad about it and knew it was wrong — as they were repugnantly expelled from the playground for their faith. I have nothing but my sincere apologies to offer them. I should have been vocal about intolerance. I can do little to heal the wounds of Shahbaz Bhatti’s family and his community. I just hope this home of ours does not go up in flames soon.

After reading this I am ashamed to even call my self a Pakistani. I don't know why people can't look beyond religion. This is what happens when you involve religion in every little and single thing.

I might sound biased but the minorities of Pakistan have given a lot to Pakistan in return we are killed in the name of religion. The constitution fails to give us rights and instead discriminates against us. Muslims have done the most damage to Pakistan not Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis etc.

 

[Realist]

I dont know how many people read this thread, but this thread should be compulsory reading for all pakistanis on here.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Culture of appeasement

Editorial
Published in The Express Tribune, March 5th, 2011

The killers of federal minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti must be puzzled by the way their murder, which they have claimed, is being interpreted in the media. They had put their identity on the pamphlet they threw in his car after killing the minister, and it said: (under the patronage) of al Qaeda and Tehreek-i-Taliban. They said they were from Punjab (Tehreek-i-Taliban, Punjab chapter) and were declaring their connection with the two binary organisations that are tormenting Pakistan and have brought its economy to a grinding halt.

The official interpretation of the killing of Mr Bhatti is that ‘foreign powers’ are trying to cause divisions in the country. This is what Interior Minister Rehman Malik has been saying since the murder; this is also the gloss he has been putting on most killings of the past where the Taliban had actually announced their complicity. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has taken exception to anyone calling the killers ‘Punjabi Taliban’, thinking this was name-calling under a kind of provincialism practised by the PPP. In the process, the killers are let off the hook: they are not to blame because ‘foreign powers’ are doing the killing; and they are not from any province because naming the province would be base provincialism.

Many TV channels have resorted to relying on ‘experts’ like ex-ISI chief Hamid Gul to further help this effort at appeasing the terrorists. Gul has made it fashionable among callers on many a talk show to say that the CIA is doing the killing to sow seeds of discord among the Pakistanis with the ultimate goal of getting at Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The police and the administrative officers have caught on to this practice of putting the blame on distant lands (the US and Israel) and the ‘near enemy’ (India) to abdicate their own responsibility of identifying and catching the terrorists.

The Taliban feel insulted when our officials say that the CIA is funding them to kill innocent Pakistanis. It particularly riles the chief of the Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, who got himself proudly photographed with the Jordanian suicide-bomber who went across the border and succeeded in killing a group of CIA officers; he also appeared in a photograph together with Faisal Shahzad who tried to blow up Times Square in New York and with ex-ISI officer Colonel Imam as the latter was being executed. The message is: We are fighting the Americans under the guidance of al Qaeda and feel insulted by your abject appeasement.

What is the psychology of this appeasement, which began in the early 2000s after al Qaeda arrived in Pakistan and hired the Taliban warlords to spread terrorism in the country? It practically forgives the terrorists, signalling that they are not the real enemy; the real enemy is India and the power that now stands behind India, the United States. The persuasion here is: Why are you killing us; we are with you in your jihad against the US. The rest of the Pakistani mind, however, is more complex. A part of it is subject to what is called the Stockholm Syndrome, seeking empowerment by embracing the tormentor instead of confronting him. And we can’t rule out the possibility that some Pakistanis actually expect the terrorists to lead the ‘game-changer’ revolution that every leader in Pakistan is loudly praying for.

The world knows what is happening. Minorities minister Bhatti knew of these realities and, if some reports are to be believed, did not trust the security detail allotted to him, not even the Christians he had as guards, because he knew that many Pakistanis secretly approve of actions where non-Muslims or apostates are killed by those claiming to speak for Islam. The ‘peace accords’ of 2004 and 2006 with the terrorists in South and North Waziristan respectively were instances of such appeasement. The terrorists were contemptuous of this appeasement and have continued killing innocent people and destroying markets and schools with impunity, declaring their identity every time. It is no use telling them that Pakistan, too, is with them in their war against America since they focus relentlessly on killing Pakistanis and taking over Pakistan. What we need to do is open our eyes and confront them.