Pakistan – Religious tolerance and cultural shift

[ps3linux]

It all started during my first job which was for a world leading financial institution and the posting was in Singapore, my boss was from British aristocracy. Coffee machine was next to my cubicle, few months into the job and came Ramadan after two days my boss calls me up and ask me I haven’t seen you taking coffee for the last two days is everything OK and I told him it was our holy month and we fast during this month and this is for 29 or 30 days and after that we celebrate, same day the coffee machine was moved to a far off place and all my colleagues stopped eating drinking in near my cubicle. Mind you that I hadn’t completely overcome the prejudices which are programmed in our brains from childhood about people of other religions despite 7 years of education in UK and it was only few years after Zia’s death that I went abroad so his version of Islam was in full flow in Pakistan, This gesture was something which moved me deeply that people of other religions the Christians, the Buddhists, and others are giving so much respect to my religious believes, they didn’t stop there they threw eid parties for us and gave us (my family and I) gifts, it was the same when I was transferred out to North America (USA and later Canada) people honored and respect my religious believes.

When we decided to come back to Pakistan we were astonished to find that despite being a Muslim country, with over 90% population of Muslims and despite the fact that Islam by virtue of it philosophy teaches religious tolerance people looked down on other religions, used nasty words about them.

However, lately in the last couple of years it seems we are coming out of the sick, perverted version of Zia and his minion’s religion, as I say we the people pf Pakistan have always been tolerant of people from other nationalities/ethnicities and religions.

Anyways last year was my first year in my current organization, which does give out “Eidi”, “clothes” and eid Mubarak to all staff in the service area, meaning the office boys, the guards, the riders, the cleaning guys, drivers etc. Come Christmas I came to know no such tradition of giving official leave to Christians or “Eidi” for that matter, so I took initiative last year and gave all Christians staff “eidi” from my own pocket and arranged cake cutting in all offices where we had Christian staff and gave them official leave on 24th and 26th, it did not make us Christians if you know contrary to the jahileen who have been sending ridiculous messages on social media, just the way giving my fasting and eid respect did not make my colleagues Muslims.

Somehow or the other company came to know about it and this year the company decided to treat the Christian “eid” as our “eid” and gave away all the usual stuff which is given to all “service staff” on “eids” including the Christians, not only that my usual personal contribution was there and this motivated rest of the staff to pitch in and contribute some money, including cake cuttings. The office in which I myself operate from when we gave the money along cake I clearly saw the chap crying with tears and told us that he was over whelmed as he too had seen the worst the radicals threw at them few years ago. A point to note is that on an average in addition to company’s “Eidi” staff gift to our Christians colleagues (about 10 of them) was around 50K each, the smiles the tears the gratitude were worth a billion rupees.

Best thing was that I did not hear a single complaint from any quarter that why are we doing it for Christians, which led me to believe that we are going back to our roots of tolerance and religious freedom, we are not completely there yet but we are moving towards that. It will not be 100% every human society has its share of radicals but it the general populace that matter and we will Insha’Allah be there. This is the cultural shift which was need of the time, unlike the countries which claim of religious tolerance and yet are at the core extremist, we on the other hand have been labeled by the world as religiously less tolerant and yet we are demonstrating otherwise instead of just words. We are Muslims and we are proud of that, and demonstrating to the world this is how a Muslim society treats its citizens of other religion.

We are not secular and we will never be a secular state, we are Muslims and a Muslim state that's how our religion teaches us to treat people of other religion. Time to take pride in who we are.

@Mangus Ortus Novem , @The Eagle , @Dubious , @Shane

 

[Sheikh Rauf]

cursing zia is not a solution it was west specially US was behind creating those fanatics for themselves. oh by the way looking only dark spot in our society is not the way.. there are alot of racisem in west either its for race or religion.

 

[Maxpane]

thats good news. i think we learn a lot from the lost due to war on terror and now people are back in their senses. we are first human being and then muslim or non muslim. ISLAM is the religion of peace and give the education of respect and kindness to humanity and we are following the which we forgot in the past decades.

 

[Baby Leone]

Come Christmas I came to know no such tradition of giving official leave to Christians or “Eidi” for that matter,

it has always been there in Pakistan, even in my organization Christains and Hindus were given salaried earlier with holidays and special gifts to them and it happens just on Tuesday as well, plus all of our staff always contributed on our own to give gifts to christian support staff on Christmas other then gifts from company, that is nothing new you have done sir it is very common in Pakistan.

& the version of Islam which was presented by Zia has already been faded and Pakistan has completely changed in the last one decade.

Pakistanis has always been moderate and tolerant to others believes, ethnicity and sexuality by nature. It just our pathetic media which always chooses to highlight rare incidents and try best to ignores 98% good.

Thanks to Social Media that Pakistan is coming to its reality and people are seeing real & Beautiful Pakistan which sometimes is more tolerant then European countries.

 

[Crusher]

It all started during my first job which was for a world leading financial institution and the posting was in Singapore, my boss was from British aristocracy. Coffee machine was next to my cubicle, few months into the job and came Ramadan after two days my boss calls me up and ask me I haven’t seen you taking coffee for the last two days is everything OK and I told him it was our holy month and we fast during this month and this is for 29 or 30 days and after that we celebrate, same day the coffee machine was moved to a far off place and all my colleagues stopped eating drinking in near my cubicle. Mind you that I hadn’t completely overcome the prejudices which are programmed in our brains from childhood about people of other religions despite 7 years of education in UK and it was only few years after Zia’s death that I went abroad so his version of Islam was in full flow in Pakistan, This gesture was something which moved me deeply that people of other religions the Christians, the Buddhists, and others are giving so much respect to my religious believes, they didn’t stop there they threw eid parties for us and gave us (my family and I) gifts, it was the same when I was transferred out to North America (USA and later Canada) people honored and respect my religious believes.

When we decided to come back to Pakistan we were astonished to find that despite being a Muslim country, with over 90% population of Muslims and despite the fact that Islam by virtue of it philosophy teaches religious tolerance people looked down on other religions, used nasty words about them.

However, lately in the last couple of years it seems we are coming out of the sick, perverted version of Zia and his minion’s religion, as I say we the people pf Pakistan have always been tolerant of people from other nationalities/ethnicities and religions.

Anyways last year was my first year in my current organization, which does give out “Eidi”, “clothes” and eid Mubarak to all staff in the service area, meaning the office boys, the guards, the riders, the cleaning guys, drivers etc. Come Christmas I came to know no such tradition of giving official leave to Christians or “Eidi” for that matter, so I took initiative last year and gave all Christians staff “eidi” from my own pocket and arranged cake cutting in all offices where we had Christian staff and gave them official leave on 24th and 26th, it did not make us Christians if you know contrary to the jahileen who have been sending ridiculous messages on social media, just the way giving my fasting and eid respect did not make my colleagues Muslims.

Somehow or the other company came to know about it and this year the company decided to treat the Christian “eid” as our “eid” and gave away all the usual stuff which is given to all “service staff” on “eids” including the Christians, not only that my usual personal contribution was there and this motivated rest of the staff to pitch in and contribute some money, including cake cuttings. The office in which I myself operate from when we gave the money along cake I clearly saw the chap crying with tears and told us that he was over whelmed as he too had seen the worst the radicals threw at them few years ago. A point to note is that on an average in addition to company’s “Eidi” staff gift to our Christians colleagues (about 10 of them) was around 50K each, the smiles the tears the gratitude were worth a billion rupees.

Best thing was that I did not hear a single complaint from any quarter that why are we doing it for Christians, which led me to believe that we are going back to our roots of tolerance and religious freedom, we are not completely there yet but we are moving towards that. It will not be 100% every human society has its share of radicals but it the general populace that matter and we will Insha’Allah be there. This is the cultural shift which was need of the time, unlike the countries which claim of religious tolerance and yet are at the core extremist, we on the other hand have been labeled by the world as religiously less tolerant and yet we are demonstrating otherwise instead of just words. We are Muslims and we are proud of that, and demonstrating to the world this is how a Muslim society treats its citizens of other religion.

We are not secular and we will never be a secular state, we are Muslims and a Muslim state that's how our religion teaches us to treat people of other religion. Time to take pride in who we are.

@Mangus Ortus Novem , @The Eagle , @Dubious , @Shane

I don't know about other provinces but in Punjab the historic racism against "local Christians" is not based on them being "Christians" but rather the fact that 99% of them belong to "untouchable" caste before they became Christian some 100 to 150 years ago. Otherwise Gora Sahib the Britishers ruling Punjab were also "Christians" but people used to envy them in all kinds of aspects before 1947. So it has never been a "religious" issue in Punjab but a "racial" issue since eternity.

 

[ps3linux]

thats good news. i think we learn a lot from the lost due to war on terror and now people are back in their senses. we are first human being and then muslim or non muslim. ISLAM is the religion of peace and give the education of respect and kindness to humanity and we are following the which we forgot in the past decades.

When someone travels around the globe like me and study Islam extensively not the one the mullah has been teaching us but the one Quran and Ahadith teach us, one realizes what a jewel of a country we have, what diversity we have and what a religion we are privileged to be follower of, while the world at large is going to the shitters, continuous propaganda and Islamophobia is now leading the world in the laps of extremist parties while on the other hand true tolerance and acceptance of diversity is now evident strangely in three notable Islamic countries namely Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, the prior ones had it for decades and we will soon be among them as well.

it has always been there in Pakistan, even in my organization Christains and Hindus were given salaried earlier with holidays and special gifts to them and it happens just on Tuesday as well, plus all of our staff always contributed on our own to give gifts to christian support staff on Christmas other then gifts from company, that is nothing new you have done sir it is very common in Pakistan.

& the version of Islam which was presented by Zia has already been faded and Pakistan has completely changed in the last one decade.

Pakistanis has always been moderate and tolerant to others believes, ethnicity and sexuality by nature. It just our pathetic media which always chooses to highlight rare incidents and try best to ignores 98% good.

Thanks to Social Media that Pakistan is coming to its reality and people are seeing real & Beautiful Pakistan which sometimes is more tolerant then European countries.

Bhai ever-since I settled back in Pakistan few years ago I have worked for a couple of organizations, what you say may be true for MNCs few corporate but not true for many financial institutions and particularly the one I am working for. This is the second organization where I have started such an initiative.

But whatever the case be I feel elated to see there is no resistance in even my type of organization and we as a society are moving towards a more moderate and tolerant approach despite the idiotic post one sees on "un-social" media.

 

[shah_123]

It all started during my first job which was for a world leading financial institution and the posting was in Singapore, my boss was from British aristocracy. Coffee machine was next to my cubicle, few months into the job and came Ramadan after two days my boss calls me up and ask me I haven’t seen you taking coffee for the last two days is everything OK and I told him it was our holy month and we fast during this month and this is for 29 or 30 days and after that we celebrate, same day the coffee machine was moved to a far off place and all my colleagues stopped eating drinking in near my cubicle. Mind you that I hadn’t completely overcome the prejudices which are programmed in our brains from childhood about people of other religions despite 7 years of education in UK and it was only few years after Zia’s death that I went abroad so his version of Islam was in full flow in Pakistan, This gesture was something which moved me deeply that people of other religions the Christians, the Buddhists, and others are giving so much respect to my religious believes, they didn’t stop there they threw eid parties for us and gave us (my family and I) gifts, it was the same when I was transferred out to North America (USA and later Canada) people honored and respect my religious believes.

When we decided to come back to Pakistan we were astonished to find that despite being a Muslim country, with over 90% population of Muslims and despite the fact that Islam by virtue of it philosophy teaches religious tolerance people looked down on other religions, used nasty words about them.
]

It all goes down to personal experiences, I don't know why people on the basis of personal experiences generalize the whole nation --- There are christian people around me for the last 25 years, I don't remember even one incident of hate ---- see Muslims helping them (food, cloths etc.,) ------ I have been to school, college, university and also Madrassa, I don't remember anybody asking me to hate non muslims ---- My Mullahs (who you seem to hate) never told me to hate non muslims.

It's good that there are nice people around you, what about those nasty ones targeting Muslims on daily basis in europe ---- What about those millions of Muslims slaughtered by their govts in the last so many decades?

 

[Maxpane]

When someone travels around the globe like me and study Islam extensively not the one the mullah has been teaching us but the one Quran and Ahadith teach us, one realizes what a jewel of a country we have, what diversity we have and what a religion we are privileged to be follower of, while the world at large is going to the shitters, continuous propaganda and Islamophobia is now leading the world in the laps of extremist parties while on the other hand true tolerance and acceptance of diversity is now evident strangely in three notable Islamic countries namely Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, the prior ones had it for decades and we will soon be among them as well.



Bhai ever-since I settled back in Pakistan few years ago I have worked for a couple of organizations, what you say may be true for MNCs few corporate but not true for many financial institutions and particularly the one I am working for. This is the second organization where I have started such an initiative.

But whatever the case be I feel elated to see there is no resistance in even my type of organization and we as a society are moving towards a more moderate and tolerant approach despite the idiotic post one sees on "un-social" media.

sir the real problem is mullaism. the problem is people considr mull a educated person in religion which he is not and then the whole problem starts. today my younger brother is telling that one of his friend was told by mulla that you cannot meet or greet christian.. it is un islamic and i think it is the problem we have to sort it out and lead people to get education about true religion of islam

 

[k s ahmed]

Blame mullah for.yihr own shit that's it.
Just UK blames immigrants. Not even once. I have heard such kind of stuff from any "mullah". It's always clean shaven securalisits who want control on others , they atribute such things towards mullah.

And what you have described is a norm in multicultural working environment. Pakistanis have always been tolerant. I worked there for 7 years.
But since u had bad image of Pakistanis , you are surprised. Basically what u mentioned is noting new . but for you yes.
My French ceo in London took.me.oit for lunch knowing it's Eid. And payed for me . I love that man still.

 

[Lincoln]

Blame mullah for.yihr own shit that's it.
Just UK blames immigrants. Not even once. I have heard such kind of stuff from any "mullah". It's always clean shaven securalisits who want control on others , they atribute such things towards mullah.

And what you have described is a norm in multicultural working environment. Pakistanis have always been tolerant. I worked there for 7 years.
But since u had bad image of Pakistanis , you are surprised. Basically what u mentioned is noting new . but for you yes.
My French ceo in London took.me.oit for lunch knowing it's Eid. And payed for me . I love that man still.

You should visit basement mosques in London more often. You will see where this mullaism stems from.

 

[k s ahmed]

You should visit basement mosques in London more often. You will see where this mullaism stems from.

I thought mullahs there are more open. Well I can't comment now.

 

[ps3linux]

sir the real problem is mullaism. the problem is people considr mull a educated person in religion which he is not and then the whole problem starts. today my younger brother is telling that one of his friend was told by mulla that you cannot meet or greet christian.. it is un islamic and i think it is the problem we have to sort it out and lead people to get education about true religion of islam

Interesting observations, I will discuss this one later, however, mullahs are of two types first the ones we come across usually normally coming off families below poverty line, which can only contribute in number of children and then getting rid of the children by sending them to some madrassah, which takes responsibility of providing the food, boarding lodging and "education" of these children, these madrassahs are under the influence of one sect or the other the Qari himself comes off the same kind of assembly lines. They have no interaction with the realities of the world and you would find them doling out fatawas they are locked up in an environment which can only produce mindless drones who could only give reference of certain mulla no intellectual capability rather argumentative, quarrelsome and abusive, unfortunately for expats this is the kind we have been exporting to the west.

Still remember one of the worst eid prayers experience of my life back inn UK, where the donation box was moved three times through all people for donation and counted thrice as mullah jee refused to conduct the prayer till the donation amounted to 10,000 pounds, mulla was of course of Pakistani origin.

There is another one and I call them scholars, I know of few Madarassah which produce this kind there are a couple in my "Pind" pindi, couple in Islamabad, one in Kharian, a couple in Lahore and few in Karachi. These madrassa not only educate their children in religion but other subjects as well inline with the aptitude of the child, their student normally earn Dars Nizami along a masters in one of the subjects. You can find them in their madrassah, corporate sector, universities and normal walk of life highly educated intellectuals. I will name few areas Rana Masjid Islamabad Kahteeb is one of them, Dr Israr was one of them, The Usmani Family, there is a mosque on main road lalazar Rawalpindi you can find these scholars on wednesday Maghrib time.

They definitely do come from any of the sect prevalent in Pakistan but it is a true pleasure to discuss matters of religion with them, invited few of these scholars back in the day to new york for inter faith dialogues with christians, jews, man it was a pleasure of life. Unfortunately they are a rare breed as compared to the other type.

There is a famous video on youtube in which one such person (although bit raw and fundamentalist for my taste) gave musharraf during his Govt some real taste.

All the damage has been done by the first type.

 

[Kaniska]

it has always been there in Pakistan, even in my organization Christains and Hindus were given salaried earlier with holidays and special gifts to them and it happens just on Tuesday as well, plus all of our staff always contributed on our own to give gifts to christian support staff on Christmas other then gifts from company, that is nothing new you have done sir it is very common in Pakistan.

& the version of Islam which was presented by Zia has already been faded and Pakistan has completely changed in the last one decade.

Pakistanis has always been moderate and tolerant to others believes, ethnicity and sexuality by nature. It just our pathetic media which always chooses to highlight rare incidents and try best to ignores 98% good.

Thanks to Social Media that Pakistan is coming to its reality and people are seeing real & Beautiful Pakistan which sometimes is more tolerant then European countries.

I have heard from my dad that Pakistan was like current Turkey in the 60’s.You have a good economy, quite tolerant to other non muslim people and good movie or music industry

 

[k s ahmed]

That guy against musharraf was mufti Adnan kaka khael. He is a legend. He comes from jamia tur Rasheed. They are also the second types of mullahs. They even give to graduates , a 4 year graduation course ( full board) to tackle modern day challenges. It's called" kuliyah Tush Sharia.". They are amazing people and run a huuuuuuge charity they are based in Karachi.

Interesting observations, I will discuss this one later, however, mullahs are of two types first the ones we come across usually normally coming off families below poverty line, which can only contribute in number of children and then getting rid of the children by sending them to some madrassah, which takes responsibility of providing the food, boarding lodging and "education" of these children, these madrassahs are under the influence of one sect or the other the Qari himself comes off the same kind of assembly lines. They have no interaction with the realities of the world and you would find them doling out fatawas they are locked up in an environment which can only produce mindless drones who could only give reference of certain mulla no intellectual capability rather argumentative, quarrelsome and abusive, unfortunately for expats this is the kind we have been exporting to the west.

Still remember one of the worst eid prayers experience of my life back inn UK, where the donation box was moved three times through all people for donation and counted thrice as mullah jee refused to conduct the prayer till the donation amounted to 10,000 pounds, mulla was of course of Pakistani origin.

There is another one and I call them scholars, I know of few Madarassah which produce this kind there are a couple in my "Pind" pindi, couple in Islamabad, one in Kharian, a couple in Lahore and few in Karachi. These madrassa not only educate their children in religion but other subjects as well inline with the aptitude of the child, their student normally earn Dars Nizami along a masters in one of the subjects. You can find them in their madrassah, corporate sector, universities and normal walk of life highly educated intellectuals. I will name few areas Rana Masjid Islamabad Kahteeb is one of them, Dr Israr was one of them, The Usmani Family, there is a mosque on main road lalazar Rawalpindi you can find these scholars on wednesday Maghrib time.

They definitely do come from any of the sect prevalent in Pakistan but it is a true pleasure to discuss matters of religion with them, invited few of these scholars back in the day to new york for inter faith dialogues with christians, jews, man it was a pleasure of life. Unfortunately they are a rare breed as compared to the other type.

There is a famous video on youtube in which one such person (although bit raw and fundamentalist for my taste) gave musharraf during his Govt some real taste.

All the damage has been done by the first type.

 

[Maxpane]

Interesting observations, I will discuss this one later, however, mullahs are of two types first the ones we come across usually normally coming off families below poverty line, which can only contribute in number of children and then getting rid of the children by sending them to some madrassah, which takes responsibility of providing the food, boarding lodging and "education" of these children, these madrassahs are under the influence of one sect or the other the Qari himself comes off the same kind of assembly lines. They have no interaction with the realities of the world and you would find them doling out fatawas they are locked up in an environment which can only produce mindless drones who could only give reference of certain mulla no intellectual capability rather argumentative, quarrelsome and abusive, unfortunately for expats this is the kind we have been exporting to the west.

Still remember one of the worst eid prayers experience of my life back inn UK, where the donation box was moved three times through all people for donation and counted thrice as mullah jee refused to conduct the prayer till the donation amounted to 10,000 pounds, mulla was of course of Pakistani origin.

There is another one and I call them scholars, I know of few Madarassah which produce this kind there are a couple in my "Pind" pindi, couple in Islamabad, one in Kharian, a couple in Lahore and few in Karachi. These madrassa not only educate their children in religion but other subjects as well inline with the aptitude of the child, their student normally earn Dars Nizami along a masters in one of the subjects. You can find them in their madrassah, corporate sector, universities and normal walk of life highly educated intellectuals. I will name few areas Rana Masjid Islamabad Kahteeb is one of them, Dr Israr was one of them, The Usmani Family, there is a mosque on main road lalazar Rawalpindi you can find these scholars on wednesday Maghrib time.

They definitely do come from any of the sect prevalent in Pakistan but it is a true pleasure to discuss matters of religion with them, invited few of these scholars back in the day to new york for inter faith dialogues with christians, jews, man it was a pleasure of life. Unfortunately they are a rare breed as compared to the other type.

There is a famous video on youtube in which one such person (although bit raw and fundamentalist for my taste) gave musharraf during his Govt some real taste.

All the damage has been done by the first type.

thank you sir for sharing your analysis. sir i want to share my experience about mullaism. when i was in 8th class then our principal was converted to mullaism. at that time we have to have a tasbih and other stuff in our bags if some thing is missing then our teacher beat us. one day principal came in class and started to listen procedure of namaz and he beat the whole class and at the end he realized that he was wrong. on the other hand i will appreciate those madrassas who give modern education and islamic education. i really want that madrasaa edducation where math astrology was compulsory with fiqh