Why Only in Pakistan....?

[Meengla]

I see, the list against Taseer adds a charge that he never visited the injured in the acts of terrorism inside Pakistan. Wow! Fanatic-lovers are indeed a different breed of 'human' beings.

Anyway, here is one more evidence of the muzzling of Pakistani society. Care to think through where Pakistan is heading and why it is important for the future of Pakistan to have dissent allowed? Is this not an open threat to say that every 'corner' will have a Mumtaz Qadri? Where are the Suo-Moto judges?

It is important to discuss events around Taseer's death thoroughly. These fanatics are NOT going to stop at this. They will want more and more and back up their demands with more and more threats. Don't think this is an exaggeration. All your talk about 'strategic locations', 'Great Game', 'Dams', Thar Coals etc are okay but what about the rot inside Pakistan which is eating the foundation like termites?


The kids below look charged up like Hitler Youth! They are even wearing brown shirts!

Taseer murder: Sunni Ittehad warns against protests – The Express Tribune

LAHORE: A Tahaffuz Namoos-i-Risalat conference held in the city on Sunday warned against public rallies and demonstrations praising Governor Salmaan Taseer or protesting his killing. A Mumtaz Qadri, speakers threatened, would be at every corner of the country to stop such displays of solidarity, a reference to the police guard who has confessed to killing the governor.
Maulana Nawaz Kharal, a spokesperson for the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), led the chorus while addressing the conference held at Aiwan-i-Iqbal. Kharal also said there should be no protest against Qadri and added, “Don’t associate Mumtaz with any terrorist group. He is a true lover of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).” He said his Sunni followers protect Qadri and his family with their lives.
SIC chairman Fazle Karim too condemned protests in favour of Salmaan Taseer. Karim said the NGOs protesting the governors’ death had never held any protest against the killings at Sunni gatherings after the attacks at Jamia Naeemia, Nishtar Park in Karachi, Data Darbar, shrines of Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Farid Ganj Shakar. He said they had not even raised a voice against the ban on the veil imposed in France. He said his followers would continue “the mission of Ghazi Ilamudin Shaheed.” He said the Sunni Tehrik would provide legal assistance to Qadri.
Dr Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali, founder of Idara Sirat-i-Mustaqeem Pakistan, announced the Ghazi Ilmudin Award for Qadri. He said that his group would lay a wreath on Ilmudin’s grave on Qadri’s behalf on January 15. He also said that it would hold a rally on January 19 from Lahore to Qadri’s residence in Rawalpindi.
Jalali then demanded that the government release Qadri as soon as possible and exonerate him from the charge of murder. He said the punishment for a blasphemer against the Holy Prophet (pbuh) was death. He claimed that the inclusion of Section 295-C in the Pakistan Penal Code had brought good luck for the country. He went on to say that all participants in Taseer’s funeral had jeopardised their Islamic faith. He said their participation in the prayers had put a question mark on their commitment to the community of the faithful.
The participants of the conference included Justice (retd) Nazeer Akhtar, former judge Nazeer Ghazi, Pir Sayed Karamat Ali and Dr Raghib Naeemi. After the conference ended, a group of SIC activists headed to the Governor’s House gate on The Mall on a van and chanted slogans in support of Qadri.Earlier, nearly 300 Sunni Tehrik activists had held a protest rally in front of the Lahore Press Club demanding Qadri’s immediate release. Participants of the rally also chanted slogans against the protestors in favour of Taseer.
In the only civil society rally after Taseer’s assassination on January 4, the participants had condemned the murder which they said was a result of religious extremism.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 10th, 2011.

 

[VCheng]

from: Pakistan: A good man who did something | The Economist


A good man who did something
Salman Taseer’s death provides a parable of why his country, which promised so much, has slipped so far
Jan 6th 2011 | from PRINT EDITION


IN HIS first speech to Pakistan’s constituent assembly, on August 11th 1947, the country’s president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, made clear his belief that religious toleration should prevail in the country he had brought into being. “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan.” It is a dreadful measure of how far Pakistan has sunk since then that Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab, was murdered on January 4th because of his outspoken support for that principle.

Mr Taseer, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party and a close ally of the president, Asif Ali Zardari, had been campaigning on behalf of Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian farm worker who in the course of a row with neighbours over drinking water was accused of blasphemy, convicted and sentenced to death. He had called for her to be pardoned, and also for the law, under which death for blasphemy against the prophet is mandatory, to be changed. His murderer, one of his bodyguards, said this was why the governor was killed.

The wider horror

The blasphemy law is bad enough in itself, but it also gives official sanction to a growing atmosphere of religious intolerance in Pakistan. Nobody has been executed under the law, but some fundamentalists regard it as their duty to do what the legal system has failed to do, and 32 people charged or convicted under the law have been murdered. Clerics called a national strike on December 31st to oppose a change in the law; whether out of support for the fundamentalists, or out of fear, it was widely observed.

Religious intolerance has also manifested itself in a horrifying wave of sectarian violence. In August 2009 the burning of a Christian church, after claims that a Koran had been desecrated, killed nine people. In May last year attacks on two mosques of the Ahmadi sect—which some mainstream Muslims regard as apostate—killed 95. In September an attack on a Shia procession killed 35 people.

Responsibility for turning Pakistan from the country that Jinnah hoped it would become into the bloodstained place it is today must be widely shared, but there are a few obvious culprits. First among them is the army. Zia ul Haq, the military dictator who took power in a coup in 1977 (and who imprisoned Mr Taseer and had him tortured), introduced sharia law, set up many of the religious schools that have produced the extremists who now plague the country, and promoted fundamentalist officers. His successors in the army have nurtured extremist groups to use them as tools within Afghanistan and against India, with little regard for their own country’s safety.

The politicians are not guilt-free, either. As a class, their venality has given democracy such a bad name that mullahs who decry it get an enthusiastic hearing; but some individuals have extra burdens of guilt to bear. Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister, formerly chief minister of Punjab and whose brother now holds that post, has long numbered fundamentalists among his allies, and it was during his time in power that the mandatory death sentence was introduced. After the Ahmadi massacre in Punjab’s capital, Lahore, neither of the Sharifs visited the mosques to pay their respects to the community.

But the Pakistan People’s Party must take its share of the blame, too. Its manifesto committed it to repealing discriminatory laws, and President Zardari made much of Ms Bibi’s case. But instead of granting a swift pardon (which he did for his interior minister, Rehman Malik, who was convicted of corruption last year) he dithered until the case became a cause célèbre for fundamentalists and then lost his nerve. The government abandoned the only two politicians brave enough to pursue the matter—Mr Taseer and Sherry Rehman, an MP who had introduced a private member’s bill to amend the law—and said it would not change the legislation.

For evil to prevail, as the old saw goes, all that is required is for good men to do nothing. But Mr Taseer’s fate shows how high a price those who do something may have to pay.

Brave people who are isolated are easy to pick off. Pakistan’s slide into darkness will be stopped only if its political class hangs together and clings on to the values Jinnah predicted would make the place “one of the greatest countries in the world”. It is a phrase that rings with tragic irony today.

from PRINT EDITION | Leaders

 

[Irfan Baloch]

The blasphemy law is bad enough in itself, but it also gives official sanction to a growing atmosphere of religious intolerance in Pakistan. Nobody has been executed under the law,

but countless have been lynched by the blood thristy mobs. this law has been used hand in hand with the "hadood Audience" a women specific law about adultry.. which gives a free had to disgrunted family members to kill their sisters and daugheters in the name of honour without any proof.



Prophet Muhammad Said in his last Sermon:

"Remember that everyone is a shepherd. You will be questioned about those under your care. If a non-Muslim were wronged in our State, I would personally plead on his or her behalf. Avoid extremes in religion. Peace, O Mankind! Peace.

O Men! Be fearful of Allah in all matters concerning women. They have rights upon you as you have rights upon them. Treat them well & be kind to them. Remember, they are ur companions, colleagues, & partners in life."


now after reading this.. going by the definition of the fanatics of Pakistan.. even the Holy Porphet Muhammad PBUH is out ine set by them.. (God forbid & forgive me).

these so called moderates are now joined by the extreme right wing Taliban appeasers like jamat Islami and JUI who are spitting fatwas like a machine gun... it might come to a point that whoever doesnt openly praise that coward Qadri will be committing Blasphemy

 

[Well.wisher]

You and I ..

We aare stupid .

 

[Hamzay]

People may whine about killing of Taseer in the name of religion forgetting killing of Gandhi by a religious extremist, and the killing of Yitzhak Rabin (Israeli Prime Minister).. so this is not only in Pakistan, this is in India and the beloved Israel also.

Actually this is in America as well. Want some data?

 

[Divergent]

From Dawn.COM


Smokers’ Corner: What casualties these are
Nadeem F. Paracha
(15 hours ago) Today


In the 1970s former prime minister Z A Bhutto once described Pakistan as a social lab to conduct various ‘Islamic experiments’. I don’t know whether Bhutto was being cynical or enthusiastic about this, but yes, it most certainly seems that this is exactly what this unfortunate republic has been all the while.

Forget about secular societies in the West that just can’t make head or tail about the way many Pakistanis behave and react in the name of religion; I have also seen people belonging to various Muslim countries sometimes scratch their heads when contemplating the behaviour of Pakistanis in this context. Are we as a Muslim majority nation really all that unique? For example, why only in Pakistan do people rise up to demand that a particular sect be declared non-Muslim — as if considering everyone else as heretics makes us feel and look more pious?

Why only in Pakistan do people remain quiet when certain man-made ‘Islamic laws’ are openly exploited to conduct personal vendettas against minorities?

Why only in Pakistan do people go on strike when a government even hints at amending such laws, despite the fact that the more sober Islamic scholars have
over and over again termed such laws as having few, if any, historical and theological precedents or justification? Are such laws yet another way for us to loudly mask the glaring social, political and economic hypocrisy that has become a way of life us?

Then, why only in Pakistan do people come out to destroy their own cities and properties for an act of blasphemy taking place thousands of miles away? And
anyway, in this respect, how seriously should the Almighty take a nation that won’t even bother to manage its own garbage dumps or dare speak up against the many gross acts of violence and injustice that take place in their Islamic republic and for which many are ready to burn buses and shoot people?

Why only in Pakistan do many people still consider violent extremists and terrorists to be some kind of gung-ho mujahids fighting nefarious infidels and superpowers, even when on most occasions it is the common Pakistanis that are being slaughtered in their own markets, schools and mosques by these romanticised renegades? Why only in Pakistan, as more and more people now pack mosques, wear hijab, grow beards and lace their sentences with assorted Arabic vocabulary, society, instead of reaping the social and cultural benefits of this show of piety continues to tumble down the spiral as perhaps the most confused and contradictory bunch of people?

Of course, we always have a handy set of excuses for all this. We lash out at ‘Islam’s enemies’ (most of whom exist only in our heads and in our history books); we scorn our politicians and ulema, but at the same time we are ever ready to kill, loot, plunder and go on strikes on the call of these very people. We blame western and Indian cultural influences, but have no clue what to exchange these with. So, unable (rather unwilling) to appreciate the fact that we share an ancient, rich and regal culture with the rest of the subcontinent, we look towards the Middle East.

We reject our own culture but adopt a half-baked understanding of Arabian culture as our own. No wonder a Pakistani continues to smile and keep quiet about the insults he constantly faces in various oil-rich countries, but he would make a huge hue and cry if and when he faces the same in a European or American city. After all, we are Arabs, and so what if our Arabic is not up to the mark, we’re getting there. But unfortunately, that’s all we’re getting at.

I pity myself and my nation. Each one is now a serious causality of all the brazen experiments that have taken place on us by those who wanted to impose their own concept of Islam in our governments, schools, streets and homes. So the next time you meet a hip, young Pakistani dude quoting a religious text, or a Pakistani who stops you from jogging at a park because he wants you to join him for prayers (you can’t ask him to join you for jogging, though), or a burqa-clad woman claiming she is a better woman than the one who does not wear a burqa, or watch a cooking show host talking more about God than the biryani she is cooking, or a bearded barber advising you not to shave, just forgive them all.

Treat us as causalities of the faith which we ourselves have distorted beyond recognition. A faith that was supposed to make us a vibrant, progressive and tolerant set of people, has, instead, and due to our own warped understanding of it, turned us into a horde of very ripe looking vegetables.

NFP Smoker's corner: Dawn News

This was a very interesting read and has relevant points.

 

[El Sidd]

You and I ..

We aare stupid .

No.
We are the luckiest and the most steadfast.

Why only Pakistan?

The answer is simple. We are chosen people of the lord.

Lol

No seriously we are special people of a very special land.

The problem is that we are under constant siege by negative minded people.

We are under siege of our own emotional blackmail.

That siege is tiring the besiegers.

Junoon se ishq se mili azaadi
Sabr o shukar se milegi kamyaabi.

Hashtag: SloganForThePakistan

 

[M. Sarmad]

No.
We are the luckiest and the most steadfast.

Why only Pakistan?

The answer is simple. We are chosen people of the lord.

Lol

No seriously we are special people of a very special land.

The problem is that we are under constant siege by negative minded people.

We are under siege of our own emotional blackmail.

That siege is tiring the besiegers.

Junoon se ishq se mili azaadi
Sabr o shukar se milegi kamyaabi.

Hashtag: SloganForThePakistan

Grandiose Delusions

 

[El Sidd]

Grandiose Delusions

Lol

Sir ji apna apna emaan ha. Kia karsakte hain ab

 

[fitpOsitive]

Wow, never knew that elite, senior and other such members of this forum think like this. So for all of you guys: izzat kamani hai tu kam karo, kabil bano. kapray utarny se izzat nai milti. And stop blaming Pakistani society for all you misries. Get up and start doing real work. We will never progress untill we are not proud of our own, whatever we are. Dunya ko kabol hon tu thek, werna manni tu hamari hi paregi.

 

[KRAIT]

we are similar to germans they thought they were the best genetic species, we think we are the best muslims.

O bhai....kaise ho.

 

[Jacob Martin]

This notion of South Asians in general has created a bigotry of low expectations among Westerners. Western media and intellectuals treat South Asians like children - it is assumed that we can't handle criticism, scrutiny, satire and debate. They try their best not to "offend" us because they now realize how deeply ingrained our culture of taking offence is. I think this is a fallout of making a society exclusively along honour-shame dichotomy instead of rational thought. As long as outwardly honour is maintained, we don't care what the reality is.

 

[El Sidd]

This notion of South Asians in general has created a bigotry of low expectations among Westerners. Western media and intellectuals treat South Asians like children - it is assumed that we can't handle criticism, scrutiny, satire and debate. They try their best not to "offend" us because they now realize how deeply ingrained our culture of taking offence is. I think this is a fallout of making a society exclusively along honour-shame dichotomy instead of rational thought. As long as outwardly honour is maintained, we don't care what the reality is.

You cannot objectifying honor. Most sub continental people are extremely tolerant to other cultures even to extent of bringing them back.
We are very fast in adopting the norms of the society and we are quite surgical in finding their fault lines.

The tricky part is when we expect a similar respected response from them and then it becomes a question if ego.

Its a round and round and merry go round. We got better survival instinct.

 

[Jacob Martin]

You cannot objectifying honor. Most sub continental people are extremely tolerant to other cultures even to extent of bringing them back.
We are very fast in adopting the norms of the society and we are quite surgical in finding their fault lines.

The tricky part is when we expect a similar respected response from them and then it becomes a question if ego.

Its a round and round and merry go round. We got better survival instinct.

Yes, we are tolerant of other cultures but in a very detached way. Our understanding of the West is very insightful in this regard. Western education, clothing, smartphones, entertainment and jobs are fine. So is USD, GBP, EUR. But we will not waste a second in bothering to find out how they got there. Simplistic treatment in history textbooks tells us that gunpowder and steam engine were the key.

Our sense of combining different ways of life includes taking Western achievements in the physical realm along with our undefined Eastern philosophy. Its not my case that our culture has nothing to offer - far from it. Some of the foremost thinkers of our times refer to Eastern wisdom and the spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama.

Except that we have failed to articulate these principles and live in a weird ad-hoc compromise.

 

[El Sidd]

Yes, we are tolerant of other cultures but in a very detached way. Our understanding of the West is very insightful in this regard. Western education, clothing, smartphones, entertainment and jobs are fine. So is USD, GBP, EUR. But we will not waste a second in bothering to find out how they got there. Simplistic treatment in history textbooks tells us that gunpowder and steam engine were the key.

Our sense of combining different ways of life includes taking Western achievements in the physical realm along with our undefined Eastern philosophy. Its not my case that our culture has nothing to offer - far from it. Some of the foremost thinkers of our times refer to Eastern wisdom and the spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama.

Except that we have failed to articulate these principles and live in a weird ad-hoc compromise.

Culture evolves just like language. We are very liberal with both.

I am not talking about superficial things like clothing or gadgets.

I am talking about the basic fabric of society. The core values. Those that survive epidemics, famine, war, industrialization and migration.