Bhang cultivation endangers Pakistan's youth

In this bhang situation the benefit of cultivation is the $1 billion over three years. The risks are worsening of the addiction crisis in Pakistan, psychosis developing in the vulnerable, driving while impaired and thus increased traffic fatalities, progression of use from marijuana to hard drugs and individual and family financial devastation.  

Amid the Covid confusion and the Karachi rains came the curious news that Pakistan plans bhang cultivation. Pakistan’s addiction treatment professionals were not consulted. And we are very concerned about the fallout of this decision on the mental health of Pakistan’s youth. And how adolescent cannabis is associated with the development of psychosis and schizophrenia at a later age. 

 

The Control of Narcotic Substances Act of 1997 defines the cultivation of bhang as illegal, but Pakistan’s 2020 Cabinet, noting the potential influx of $1 billion in three years, the strength of hemp rope and the medicinal uses of cannabidiol has agreed to the industrial cultivation of cannabis. 

 

Bhang is an edible mixture of the buds, leaves and flowers of the marijuana plant and has been used in the Subcontinent since 1000 BC. Hemp is also derived from the marijuana plant, and has industrial uses in making rope, clothes, shoes, paper. THC or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in bhang, is addictive, helps relieve pain, increases the appetite, and reduces nausea and vomiting. Cannabidiol is a low-potency THC product with multifarious claims of reducing pain to controlling seizures. The only FDA approved indication for cannabidiol is for two rare types of childhood seizures. All the other claims for cannabidiol are not borne out by research. And it is unregulated and frequently contains high doses of THC.  

 

In my addiction practice I am able to help patients achieve sobriety from a variety of addictive substances, from heroin to amphetamines. But cannabis addiction is usually very resistant to all forms of treatment. Cannabis causes relaxation and euphoria, but in the acute stage can cause a violent psychosis, especially when used in a pure form, which is what is easily found in Pakistan. Long term use in teenagers results in psychosis at a later age, and use in adults causes slowed reflexes, sleepiness, memory loss and cognitive issues, presenting the picture of dementia. 

 

In June 2020 the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association published my article on Pakistan's alcohol, opioid and methamphetamine crisis. The neurobiology of addiction is explained in the article and it is basically all a matter of receptors. If your endocannabinoid receptor enjoys marijuana, you are likely to become addicted. Per capita Pakistan is the most heroin-addicted country in the world! And the crisis of alcohol, opioids and methamphetamine, or Ice, is ravaging society, especially our young. For the longest time we have known that marijuana is the gateway drug. And it becomes a matter of progression from marijuana to Ice and heroin. The article also details how little Pakistan spends on addiction treatment.

 

Medical marijuana has been approved in some states of the US only because of the powerful marijuana lobby and the US Congress being itself on sale to the highest bidder. In my research for this article, it appears that there are is a powerful and persistent marijuana, I mean, bhang lobby, in Pakistan. And it has clearly succeeded.

 

As addiction specialists we practice evidence-based medicine, relying on scientific studies to guide our management. This, combined with years of experience, allows us to make both individual and national recommendations. 

 

Cannabis use is widespread in Pakistan, true. And everyone does not develop psychosis with cannabis use. The neurobiology of addiction, as well as its consequences, are not completely known, and it appears that there is a vulnerability to the serious adverse effects of cannabis. We are unable to tell who has this vulnerability and who does not. 

 

The claim is that this bhang cultivation will be tightly regulated and overseen by the government. In Pakistan’s environment this is a delusional claim at worst and an optimistic one at best. The message that goes out loud and clear to Pakistanis is that cannabis is being officially cultivated and its use is really not an issue. 

 

For every condition in Medicine we weigh the risk-benefit ratio of each management option. So, in this bhang situation the benefit of cultivation is the $1 billion over three years. The risks are worsening of the addiction crisis in Pakistan, psychosis developing in the vulnerable, driving while impaired and thus increased traffic fatalities, progression of use from marijuana to hard drugs and individual and family financial devastation. 

 

Pakistan has a very youthful population. Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry and Prime Minister Imran Khan while salivating over the billions from bhang, need to clearly understand that they will have consigned some of Pakistan’s youth to a terrible future. We should in fact work toward a university-affiliated addiction center that can be the national repository of statistics and research, guide addiction treatment and participate in health care policy as related to addiction. Even with this bhang issue, there is more to it than just money.  

The Shower of Shoes

 Personal issues and struggles are one thing; for them to be partnered up with a national and global fiasco feels like Bugs Bunny flattened out by a truck. 

My first major trauma was at age 12 when I lost my brothers to a car accident. I remember thinking that life would be a cakewalk thereafter. How could it possibly get worse? But it did. Five years later my father died while playing tennis. My tack changed suddenly, and thereon, I have waited for the other shoe to fall. And life has delivered. Again, again and yet again. Personal issues and struggles are one thing; for them to be partnered up with a national and global fiasco feels like Bugs Bunny flattened out by a truck. 

 

Witnessing a pandemic

We would read about pandemics in books of history and medicine. To see it unfold before our eyes, and to live in the richest country in the world with five million infected and over 160,000 deaths is surreal. And if masks are not worn there could be 300,000 deaths by December 2020. How wearing a mask infringes on one’s liberty is still difficult for me to comprehend. What I do know is that this refusal is bare selfishness. I did telemedicine with a patient who called with classic Covid-19 symptoms. “We went to a winery and all the people that went there are Covid-19 positive”. I asked if they had been wearing masks. “Of course not!” she said, a touch derisively. 

 

My little neighborhood will contribute to the 300,000 deaths also. Two houses down, they’ve brought a portable swimming pool and the children are squealing as they jump in the water. And the adults enjoy their beers sitting in clusters. Masks you ask? Duh! 

 

A pandemic of dysphoria

I was never into parties and used to create excuses not to attend. This strange time brings the aphorism that man is a social animal into painful focus. That I cannot jump up and even go for lunch with a friend, only serves to deepen this strange dysphoria.  Michelle Obama has been frank about her low-grade depression. In each patient visit I make sure I ask about an increase in anxiety and depression. It is remarkable that the reply is essentially always in the affirmative and I have to determine whether my advice, professional counseling and/or medication are needed. Perhaps this state of being dispirited is the result of tackling the assault at us at so many levels-social, emotional, financial and physical. After my father’s death, I followed the textbook and dutifully suffered a major depression. And have always lived in fear of a recurrence. I recognize that this dysphoria is different and that I am not alone. Perhaps that is what adds to it. It is so rare to come across people who are loving this leisure; if there were more of them, perhaps they could do a collective yank and the blues would disappear. 

 

Backyard chai 

Utilizing her vacation, a cousin who lives in Philadelphia decided to visit family in Ohio. I hastily put together chai on our patio and felt this great mood change after she and her husband left. And now my backyard chais are a wonderful treatment option for the Covid blues. Just need cloud cooperation;  sometimes “taking a raincheck” becomes literal.  

 

An epidemic within a pandemic

Addictions in general, and opioid use disorder in particular, are greatly worsened by social isolation. And these strange times call for social isolation. Opioid overdose deaths were over 70,000 in 2019 and over the last several years we have recognized that opioid use disorder was an epidemic in the US. The shameful governmental response to Covid-19 has had a downstream effect on the epidemic of opioid use disorder. The greatest obstacle to recovery has been access to treatment and during the lockdown and subsequent scaling back of activity at treatment centers, the epidemic within the pandemic got a lot worse. People are also using alcohol to treat the multiple struggles that have suddenly surfaced. Unemployment, social restrictions, financial stringency, isolation, family dysfunction, illness/infection, depression, anxiety push people for the reprieve that alcohol gives. The health care system is so flawed and overwhelmed that the opioid epidemic is necessarily taking a backseat to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

 

The year of death

I do not recall a single year in which every other day brought the news of deaths of people that we knew, the way that 2020 has. A classmate and another classmate’s wife died of Covid-19. My best friend’s mother died of natural causes. A classmate’s 32- year old daughter died recently, leaving a 17 month and a three- year old child. And the volley continues reliably. I have a momentary fear of checking my phone, for fear of having to write “To God we belong and to Him is our return”, again. 

 

Recognizing racism

Perhaps the only good part of 2020 has been the Black Lives Matter Movement. While the mind rages against the brutal murder of George Floyd, the heart knows that his blood was not in vain. And that of innumerable innocents through decades of police brutality and institutionalized racism. But the road is long. And we must see this through. 

 

With the weird dysphoria that Covid-19 has created and the repeated assaults one has had to suffer; I don’t have to wait for the other shoe to fall. They're falling one after another; a veritable shower of shoes. 

 

Keep Throw Change

Many years ago I was talking to a physician colleague who is also in solo practice. I asked her how she made it, as she only worked in the office, and didn’t do hospital rounds. Her response has stayed with me and I dredge it up when the going gets tough. She said: my needs are not that many.

I coined the KTD acronym and Marie Kondo became the millionaire. Decades ago yielding to my near-OCD clutter-phobia, I created a method to deal with organizing rooms. It is simple and works well: you start from one corner of the room and for each item ask the question of whether you should keep, throw or donate it. Marie Kondo has the exotic Japanese twist to basically the same premise. And I certainly don’t identify with the rolling up of clothes instead of regularly folding them that she does. 

With the Covid-19 crisis we can extrapolate the KTD practice to what has suddenly become a massive individual, national and global issue. And the KTD can become KTC, keep, throw, change.

Individual

I want to keep the breakfasts with my mother with no background pressure of things to do. Also the drives with my family in which the conversations are deeper and more spiritual as the content has shriveled, being that interaction with friends has gone down, and mundane stuff has exited. 

Health and time

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that the two most valuable things we have are health and time. And I want to treasure these. I had a schedule before Ramadan and now that fasting is here, the schedule has to change a bit but productivity, contentment and joy lie in creating another schedule and then dutifully following it. Being near-OCD, multitasking, female and physician have been assets to me. And though time now does not run away from me like it used to, I want to keep valuing it and harnessing it, and keep it front and center, as life slowly returns to normal. 

Rushing around

We’ve got to get rid of the rushing around. A lot of us realize that all we were doing was jogging on the spot. We’ll need to choose how we will fill our day. A conscious, perhaps a written plan, is vital to reintroducing items in our schedule. Life has this bad habit of descending into automatic chaos unless you rein it in, train it. Whether it is office or house work, it is essentially endless and can swallow you whole if you’re not careful. We must be controllers of our time, not let it control us. Which reminds me of another Mahjabeenism: if you don’t lead life, it tends to lead you. 

My needs are not that many

Many years ago I was talking to a physician colleague who is also in solo practice. We were discussing the challenges of practice and not wanting to be bought out by hospitals and dealing with practice finances. I asked her how she made it, as she only worked in the office, and didn’t do hospital rounds. Her response has stayed with me and I dredge it up when the going gets tough. She said: my needs are not that many. Cloistered at home we realize that our needs are really not that many, and as we return to normalcy, not immediately expanding our needs is paramount. 

Life trajectory

All this time has afforded us a unique, albeit forced, opportunity to assess the trajectory of our lives. Professionally and personally we can assess and decide what combination of keep, throw, change we should use. 

Quran immersion

For years I have wanted to reach a point of understanding the Quran when it is recited or read. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, I’ve been working with the Quranic app and it is amazing in the way that it teaches Quranic Arabic. The current cloistering situation lends another unique opportunity for Quran immersion. Previously in Ramadan iftar parties and taraweeh prayer really ate into the already chopped up day. I’ve discovered another great book that takes each Quranic Arabic word and places the English meaning below it The Glorious Quran Word to Word translation. Hopefully when Ramadan ends I will continue to have a daily relationship with the Quran. 

National

Daily condolences

Pre-Covid I would write a condolence message once a month or maximally every two weeks. Muslims write the Quranic text of “to God we belong and to Him is our return”. Last week I had pasted it in Arabic calligraphy to someone. This week I have sent condolences twice each day. It first started with deaths narrated on television, then of relatives of friends, then distant relatives. I dread how it is closing in. This has to stop. 

Social inequity

The tales are harrowing. “I used to earn $250,000 a year and now it is zero” said a radio interviewee. “Thank you for donating to our fitness club” is gratitude from a business owner who needs donations to get through this crisis. Seeing the miles-long car lines in Texas to get donated food is difficult to process in our minds. Is this America? A Mercedes in the line gets its turn. The owner can get his car payment deferred for a month or two but has clearly run out of money for groceries. It seems people have become paupers overnight. The factors that have led to the tremendous inequality in our society need to be redressed. 

Stampede through the eye of a needle

The CARES Act 2020 through the Paycheck Protection Program was intended to help small businesses across America. But appears that no safeguards were put in place and the stampede through the eye of the needle got sharks across America, with slick lawyers and smooth relationships with bankers, to run it dry within a week. 71 publicly traded companies received $300 million of the $346 billion that was allocated to help small businesses leaving many small businesses out in the cold. Even though payroll documentation has to be provided, and the assistance was meant for companies with less than 500 employees, the loophole that Shake Shack used was of having less than 500 employees in one location. Due to public condemnation, Shake Shack has returned  the $10 million assistance it got, but the other billionaires are enjoying the money. This ever-widening gap between rich and poor also needs to be addressed urgently, and quickly become a thing of the past. 

The great equalizer

Covid-19 takes the rich, famous, regular and poor, and its humiliation of America is hard to process. Regression to the status of a developing country, and the dubious distinction of being the world’s Covid hotspot is ignominious. Americans deserve better than the performance of the federal government having essentially no stockpile of ventilators and personal protective equipment and the lack of an integrated federal and state response to tackle the pandemic. Our disaster response needs urgent and intense overhaul. 

Medicare for all

The first domino has fallen. More than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment which terminates their health insurance. Our health care system was already very flawed, leaving large segments of the population uninsured due to the ridiculously high monthly insurance premiums. That flaw is now going to involve a large swath of the population. Medicare for all is the only way that the sequelae of Covid-19 can be addressed. 

Trump’s tyranny

If a person in any organization had suggested that disinfectant be inhaled, ingested and injected, they would have been fired on the spot. There is a rise in emergency department visits of people that have done exactly what Trump suggested three days ago and the number of calls to Poison Control have skyrocketed. Perhaps there should be a class-action lawsuit against Trump for aggravated assault or attempted murder. Whether we use the T for throw or the C for change, Americans must act in November to remove the embodiment of lies, the spectacle of stupidity and the epitome of incompetence that Trump is. We should try to retain a smidgeon of respect in the world community. Four more years is akin to a death sentence especially after our Covid suffering. 

Tariq Jameel too

Tariq Jameel is a Pakistani preacher a’la Billy Graham. He is charismatic and has a large following in Pakistan. His lectures have been attempts at humor, with superficial and distorted religious teachings. The fake-crying really gets me. As does the fact that seemingly educated people, including Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,  just love him. His latest edict is that the Covid-19 pandemic occurred because women are shameless and not properly clothed. Religion in Pakistan, as elsewhere, is a multimillion-dollar industry and especially in Ramadan, the money really flows. Revolutionary poet Habib Jalib has a beautiful verse: 

Muflis jo agar tan ki qaba baich raha hai

Waiz bhi to minbar pey dua baich raha hai

Doanoan ko hai darpaish sawaal apney shikam ka

Ik apni khudi, aik khuda baich raha hai

The poverty stricken is selling his clothes

And the preacher sells prayers at the altar

Both are faced with the question of hunger

One is selling his self-respect, the other is selling God. 

There is no priesthood or confession in Islam; it is entirely deeds based. On the Day of Judgement we will be presented with a pictorial representation of our worldly life and our accounting will be individual, with no parents or preachers intervening. The accounting of religious clerics however will be a notch, or many, above the simple individual accounting that we will endure, because they have the ability to guide or misguide large groups of people. Previously the flock was restricted to the mosque and its surroundings; with the advent of technology, it now is millions at a time worldwide. It behooves the likes of Tariq Jameel to remember that frank misguidance of millions of people will be an insurmountable obstacle on the Day of Judgement. Pakistanis would be well served to listen to the calm, logical, scientific and current-day applicable lectures and interpretations of Javed Ahmad Ghamdi

Global

Climate change

The videos and photos of the skyline of cities around the world since the Covid-19 quarantine are quite stunning. The clarity of the air and the chirping of the birds is such a balm in these troubling times. As the pandemic subsides the world must actively decide on what industries it will re-allow and the massive polluters it should not. Passivity in this regard should be avoided. We have damaged the planet enough; it is now a time of introspection and revision. 

Cooperation

Cooperation among world health bodies such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations, The World Bank etc. are vital so that we truly work together as we are all in this together. Trump’s bullying and threats first to the United Nations and then to the World Health Organization should cease. If it is one thing that Covid-19 has demonstrated is that it will attack nations of all stripes and the best response is a concerted and not divided one. 

We are taught that after fasting in the month of Ramadan, or after Hajj the Muslim pilgrimage, one should work toward and notice a change in ourselves. Similarly we should keep the valuable, discard the unnecessary, and change some issues/people as we emerge from our Covid-19 quarantines. And as documented in world history and known individually, if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we are made to repeat them. The price next time might be incalculable. 

COVID-19 Cloistered Syndrome

Even though we are cloistered in luxury, it feels like incarceration. The human mind takes a while to process trauma but knowing this does not seem to reduce its impact. My mind goes through these cycles of dread.

I am terrified of, and at the same time fascinated with, blindness and imprisonment. Only because I know I couldn’t handle either. Thus 48 Hours, Forensic Files and 20/20 are my favorite shows. The point when the murderer is sentenced has a particular impact on me because of the essential impossibility, in my mind, of spending 30 years or life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

The cycles of dread

Even though we are cloistered in luxury, it feels like incarceration. The human mind takes a while to process trauma but knowing this does not seem to reduce its impact. My mind goes through these cycles of dread. Starts with the morning when the bed is a magnet and I am steel. Email’s been checked, Whatsapp’s been checked, articles have been read. And then the mental persuasions begin: “come on get out of bed, it’s gonna be ok” and variations of the same. 

Each day is more onerous than the last, because the case-rate and fatalities are so much higher. On March 1^st 2020 there were 89 Coronavirus cases in the US. By March 7^th there were 446, by March 14^th 2,776, by March 21^st there were 23,432 and by March 31^st 186,258 people were infected! And as of April 2^nd there were 243,134 cases in the US and 5,864 deaths, and on April 8^th 427,824 cases and 14,721 deaths. We used to casually use the word exponential, now we see it every day.

So one option is not to watch or read anything related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that doesn’t work for me. And this week it is people we know who are in the ICU; statistics are so different from when a disease hits home like that. And as the days go on, those episodes of paralyzing dread become sickeningly familiar. 

Sunlight the savior

Even a twenty-minute walk does wonders. “I can do this” and “this too shall pass” become fulfillable mantras. Just the pre-walk is like a one-hour vacillation of the fight between the “go” and “don’t go” voices in my head. And the sinking realization that it has come to this; an activity and numerous others that were automatic in the past are actual projects now. 

Bankruptcy

A physician colleague just posted something hilarious and horrid: “if this saga continues, I will have something in common with Donald Trump, Chapter 11”. And speaking of Trump there is first the specter of small businesses going out of business and then suffering Trump’s press briefings and manifest incompetence. 

Small businesses are seeing a 70-80% reduction in activity. And this applies to a large swath of businesses from manufacturing to medicine. A bipartisan CARES Act 2020 was passed but has run into all kinds of snafus, and the immediate provision of $10,000 to small businesses and the Payroll Protection Program seem like they may not materialize or will arrive when irretrievable damage has been done. The consequences of this are not just small businesses filing bankruptcy, but millions of people losing their health insurance. Which in turn make a recession a definite, and the Second Great Depression a probability. Scaling back, pre-retirement or retirement plans are so much more palatable when they are done on our time; having them shoved in your face just worsens that cycle of dread. 

Tyrannical Trump

Never fails that when I am trapped in the kitchen cooking dinner, Trump’s press briefings are on and all channels carry them. Piled on top of the cloistered blues is the tyranny of Trump. It is hard to comprehend that the President of the United States would bully reporters, call the World Health Organization names, peddle hydroxychloroquine repeatedly, lie blatantly, fight with all things Democrat, alter facts whimsically and be altogether rude, grandiose and delusional. With the reverberant theme of “it is this way because I say it is”. And the citizenry has no recourse. “The  CDC recommends face masks but I won’t be wearing them” is Trump’s typical of “do as I say and not as I do”. The cycles of dread are fueled with the sickening realization that a petulant teenager has the lives of millions on his narcissistic little hands. 

All this time

Time was that vacations and staycations were just so awesome. Now time hangs heavy and the voices that propel to action feel shrill. I used to dream of a sabbatical when I would write my book. That the day is filled with telemedicine, cleaning, napping, cooking, the news and bed makes my self-worth tank. And I re-read those self-affirming memes that soothingly forgive you for essentially becoming a lump of lard. 

Fat on the other side

I’m very fat-phobic and my children accuse me of wanting to commit fat-icide. My mother and aunts were fabulous cooks; and round and rolly to prove it. And it was so plain that most, if not all, famous chefs are obese. So I figured I would dislike cooking and that would take care of any roundness that might threaten me. One of the memorable things of this cloistering will be that I discovered the joys of cooking. The family appreciating the meal every evening, is truly one of the greatest joys I have ever felt. Fortunately for me, I don’t have a sweet tooth and am not a stress eater; quite the South Beach lo-carb diet queen. That I have never been skin-and-bones is all my mesomorphic build, genes and metabolism-as rationalized by all overweight folks. Used to weigh myself once a week, now it is every day. The cycles of dread, my molasses like inertia, the specter of a financial fall, the disgust of governmental corruption and incompetence, the sadness of the national and global death toll and the fury of how this pandemic could have been handled differently will all be there. But at least I won’t be fat on the other side. 

The World on Reboot

On one fine day in Wuhan China the novel Corona virus traveled from bat to human and then between humans. And in that sentinel event, God conveyed, again, that He was in control. 

Like in a bad chapter of a sci-fi novel, the Corona virus pandemic will kill many and leave many in sudden poverty. It is indeed surreal to comprehend that in our lifetimes we will have seen a pandemic and likely The Second Great Depression. 

“These pandemics are on a one hundred-year cycle, almost like clockwork” said Dr. Nasir Husain, an infectious disease consultant. This piqued my curiosity, so I looked it up, and he is right. The Great Plague or The Black Death in 1347 killed an estimated 75-200 million. The world got a bit of a respite until the Italian Plague of 1629 which killed 280,000. Then the plague of Marseille in 1720 killed 100,000. The Spanish Flu, or the influenza pandemic in 1918, is estimated to have killed 17-50 million people. And in 2020 the Coronavirus.

At the time of this writing there were 307,725 Covid-19 cases and 13,054 deaths worldwide. Sadly by the time you read this, you will note that that the cases are exponentially higher. 

The slow unfold

The WHO vacillated a bit before it called the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And after it did, instead of our government going on overdrive and doing a national clampdown, the country got split between people calling it overblown (Trump fans) and others demanding immediate action (labeled the liberals). At the time of this writing, only three states, California, Illinois and New York have gone into lockdown and it feels like this is a developing country, with the government’s focus on censoring the news and not wanting to face the rising numbers. There is a shortage of ventilators, ICUs, personal protective equipment and even masks. We have a defense budget to invade and destroy other countries, but we cannot protect our own. Trump was informed of the Covid-19 threat in January 2020 but did nothing about it. Instead our corrupt Congresspersons sold and bought shares on the stock market, feared the Coronavirus threat in private and denigrated it in public and boasted of our preparedness to tackle it. 

Every day my strategy of medical practice changed. On Friday, March 13, we worked on advising people observation when they called in with respiratory symptoms, and examined some that came for unrelated visits but had respiratory issues. By Monday March 16, we converted to telemedicine, except for having to physically see some patients who I cannot prescribe medication to without a urine drug screen.  

The Second Great Depression?

America has slowly closed down. The Stock Market is reminiscent of the Great Depression. Unemployment claims are surging and it is predicted that they might reach an unprecedented territory of 2.25 million. How does a country recover from that? My private practice has been scaled down to the point that survival beyond 30-45 days at this pace is difficult to envision. I’m trying to hold on to my employees because starting from scratch when all this is over, is not a good move. Other small businesses in America cannot do this. To come to terms with the sudden change in our fortune-with little work and the stock market crash-just adds to this one word that my mind keeps churning up. WHAT?! Seems we will spend the next couple decades getting out of this medical and money mess. Which looks like the Second Great Depression to me. 

Stages of Grief

To think that the entire world is going through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief is also weird. For a few seconds in the morning while the brain is still half asleep there is respite. And then it suddenly hits; and for me it is mainly denial/disbelief at what just got unleashed, and anger at our government for its incompetence and the deaths of thousands. Hopefully, not millions. 

Individual and national arrogance

All those aphorisms of “we’re in this together” and “it’ll never be the same again” suddenly stop being corny. When we go away on vacation, almost invariably, we reboot, we reflect. From existential questions to simpler ones like where am I headed or should I consider a career change. With this Covid-19 induced forced vacation, the world is on reboot; our questions multiply and the answers seem to hide. We took so much for granted: parties, concerts, travel, shopping. If I dare plan a quick grocery stop now, the yelling chorus from my daughters is enough for me to want to jump off the cliff instead. Groceries must be delivered. 

All of us have had varying levels of arrogance and have doled out injustice. As we are cloistered in our homes a personal inventory is very much in order. This is the time to repair relationships and ask for forgiveness. And most of all, put down the smartphone and just sit and talk to your family. Indulge them. Especially if you are a parent, realize the anxiety, however camouflaged, that your children are going through and alleviate it. Reassure your parents and friends and keep the conversation positive. Arrogance in Islam is akin to shirk or the sin of association, for arrogance can only belong to God. 

National arrogance, especially the arrogance of American leadership, appears to have not even been lightly dented by the massive catastrophe that the Coronavirus pandemic is.

In the war and devastation in her country, the very young Syrian child, just before her death said "I will tell Allah every thing". It seems that Allah listened.

No one speaks of the American killing of one million Iraqi civilians on the basis of the lie of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. The incarceration and torture of millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang China is not spoken of, even by Muslim countries, for fear of Chinese trade reprisal. Israeli apartheid and the daily brutalization of Palestinians is presented to the world with a switch of victim and aggressor. The world, even Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both hungry for Indian trade and money, looks away as India continues the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and has kept Kashmiris in lockdown for nine months now. Iran has suffered a significant Covid-19 toll but America refuses to lift sanctions, and innocent Iranians suffer the lack of basic medical care. Even the desperation of our own citizens doesn’t return us our humanity and compassion. 

Who’s in control?

On one fine day in Wuhan China the novel Corona virus traveled from bat to human and then between humans. And in that sentinel event, God conveyed, again, that He was in control. 

Jawad Ahmad, a Pakistani singer, introduces one of his songs with a poetic representation of the Quran and Hadith in the form of a conversation between God and us, in which God says:

Oh son of Adam
There’s something you want and something that I want

But what will happen is what I want

So submit yourself totally to what I want 

And perhaps I will give you what you want

But if you are disobedient and rebellious with what I want

I will tire you out in your pursuit of what you want

And in the end it will always be what I want

Submission

The only sanity is in submission. Entirely to God’s will. Stay at home, be kind to your family, strengthen your spirituality, learn new skills, wash your hands, take every precaution and stop panicking. God’s got this. Wa uffawidu amri ilallah inallaha baseerun bil ibad: I entrust all my affairs to God; indeed God is aware of His servants. (Quran 40:44)